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A review by naleagdeco
Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (3rd Edition) by Steve Krug
5.0
I am a programmer. My idea of a beautiful UI is Nethack. My idea of a great UX is grep. (Hint: You probably don't want me designing a UI, ever.)
But writing a web site, even a dynamic one, is something I have to do as part of my profession, and if nobody else takes on that task, I guess it's on me. And we as developers need empathy in general, let alone an understanding of what is the way that will make as wide an audience feel happiest when using our product (and enabling people to do with what I make what everything that I hope it offers them.)
--
I was designing a webapp to learn some new technology and see if I could get even an amateur hobby web/mobile application under my belt, and was looking for something as thoughtless as "this is how all apps should be designed. Always make them look like this. Always have these pieces here" and so on.
This was the second book I read. The first, Joel Spolsky's [b:User Interface Design for Programmers|41790|User Interface Design for Programmers|Joel Spolsky|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1385163404s/41790.jpg|41306] was good at at beating into my head the kind of values I needed to approach this from an empathy point of view.
This book gets more into the nuts and bolts, even if at an introductory level. It's the kind of book I'm going to need to own and keep around me as I try to do something very foreign to me, design a web page, and keep referencing to make sure I'm sticking to the framework of though as I'm doing what I'm doing ... when in doubt, skim over the book and reassert that I'm on the right path.
--
I probably haven't digested the material enough to recite it back, but basically, it gives me a little bit of a basic layout for how I should structure an app, but also builds into models of how I should anticipate the user engaging with what I make, how they will scan the app and hunt for things in very different ways than I think when engaging with software, and so on. It gives you practical thoughts on how to think of your product as a tool that people are only using because they want to achieve something and maybe your tool will help them do that.
--
So yeah, my big recommendation is that if you're clueless about UX like me, you'll want to have this book around to reorient yourself around repeatedly, like little mantras and compasses.
But writing a web site, even a dynamic one, is something I have to do as part of my profession, and if nobody else takes on that task, I guess it's on me. And we as developers need empathy in general, let alone an understanding of what is the way that will make as wide an audience feel happiest when using our product (and enabling people to do with what I make what everything that I hope it offers them.)
--
I was designing a webapp to learn some new technology and see if I could get even an amateur hobby web/mobile application under my belt, and was looking for something as thoughtless as "this is how all apps should be designed. Always make them look like this. Always have these pieces here" and so on.
This was the second book I read. The first, Joel Spolsky's [b:User Interface Design for Programmers|41790|User Interface Design for Programmers|Joel Spolsky|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1385163404s/41790.jpg|41306] was good at at beating into my head the kind of values I needed to approach this from an empathy point of view.
This book gets more into the nuts and bolts, even if at an introductory level. It's the kind of book I'm going to need to own and keep around me as I try to do something very foreign to me, design a web page, and keep referencing to make sure I'm sticking to the framework of though as I'm doing what I'm doing ... when in doubt, skim over the book and reassert that I'm on the right path.
--
I probably haven't digested the material enough to recite it back, but basically, it gives me a little bit of a basic layout for how I should structure an app, but also builds into models of how I should anticipate the user engaging with what I make, how they will scan the app and hunt for things in very different ways than I think when engaging with software, and so on. It gives you practical thoughts on how to think of your product as a tool that people are only using because they want to achieve something and maybe your tool will help them do that.
--
So yeah, my big recommendation is that if you're clueless about UX like me, you'll want to have this book around to reorient yourself around repeatedly, like little mantras and compasses.