Krug Book Essay
Summary and Thoughts
Brendan Frobey
MFC 215 Bofrobey@buffalo.edu
Reading author Steve Krug’s book Don’t Make Me Think in the third, and newest
edition, was a helpful insight into webpage design. This book is very to the point with its reader
and doesn’t waste any time delivering its message. The title of the book is a good example of the
rest of the text inside, one of the author’s intentions in writing this book is to teach the reader not
to overthink anything when approaching their websites. Krug says that the book is kept short in
length on purpose so that people will actually read the entire thing and get more out of what he is
trying to convey to them. In my opinion the book is very useful when approaching web design
especially his guiding principles.
Krug’s first law of usability is actually the same as the title to the book, showcasing its
importance in his ideology when it comes to web design. This law makes a ton of sense to me,
the idea that you should design your website for the ease of use for your user. The idea that a
reader of your website should never have to search to find anything, never have to second guess
clicking a link because they aren’t sure if it will take them to what they need. What makes this
rule so useful is that once heard it may seem like common sense it doesn’t seem to be practiced
all that often. Everyone has been frustrated by a website were we have to click around and
around again to finally find the information that was “hidden” from us behind tons of confusing
titles and link names. But when a site follows Krug’s first law it’s apparent and for me a good
example would be google. When you go to the search engines home page it’s simplistic as can be
with just their logo and a search bar large, front and center of the page, with less likely used
items smaller and tucked to the outskirts of the screen. This follows his idea that you should try
and make everything self-evident, which google does plain as day that you type what you want
to search in the search bar and click search. There’s nothing to distract or mislead any user.
The next main idea Krug tries to get across is that readers don’t read a webpage as we
might them to. When we view a webpage we don’t start at the top and go left to right reading
everything, we instantly scan randomly looking for what we seek. Krug introduces a term,
satisficing, which combines sufficing and satisfying to indicate that when designing a webpage,
you don’t necessarily choose the best option but the first reasonable one. To account for the fact
that readers won’t actually be reading your whole page you have to design it so when they just
look for their specific reason for being on the sight it’s not buried in a haystack. Krug also points
out that a large portion of the internet using population has no idea how the internet, websites, or
even their computer works nor do they care. This doesn’t make them bad people beside in all
honestly they don’t have to care, for many the internet is a tool and nothing more. They just want
to get what they need out of a page and be done.
Krug’s solution the notion that users scan and not read is creating your websites with
billboard design. The first part of this is to embrace conventions. People having preconceived
notions isn’t always a bad thing, particularly for web design. When you create your web site in
such a way that caters for how many users feel comfortable navigating and finding information
will help their overall experience using your website. Going with the internet norm for things,
such as where things will appear on the page, like your company logo in the top left will give the
user a sense of ease as your webpage will feel familiar to them even it’s their first time on the
webpage. Krug explains that if you create visual hierarchies or how you design the page into
different sections, headings, etc. will change the ease of which a user will navigate through your
website. Another big point in this chapter is making sure the reader knows what’s clickable on
your page. I myself have been frustrated many times when it isn’t clear where I have to or what
is actually clickable. When it isn’t make clear what you need to interact with on the page people
will not want to do the work to find it. Formatting and text styles are also touched on for their
role in either aiding or distracting the user. Krug explains using things like lists, headings, and
highlighted key terms can all help organize your page in such a way where it is easy for anyone
to clearly see what information belongs where and what a section might be pertaining to at a
glance.
Users like mindless choices, this idea Krug thinks is essential to planning your webpage.
When a person has to make any choice on your website it should be as clear and easy to decipher
which option is best for them to choose. He provides an example of breaking up information, as
to not confront the reader with all the info at once. He shows that when a login, sign up, and
purchase option boxes are all on the same screen the user might have to read each to make sure
they are inserting their information into the correct one. But on the other hand if you have your
home page with clear buttons linking to each of those things without wasting space on all three
for the fact that no one would or could use all of them at once anyway. Krug acknowledges that
you will have to help your reader with different aspects of your website. He does encourage
though that when attempting to guide the user make the information, brief but sufficient enough
to get the point across, timely so that the user gets the help when they will most likely need it,
and unavoidable so that a person can’t miss help they will need by accident.
Krug cleverly introduces the idea to not waste time and space with unnecessary words by
titling this chapter, “Omit needless words”. This is a glimpse and the fairly humorous tone that
the entire book is written with, but it is effective in getting his point across. When you put in
extra and unneeded words onto your webpage, all you are doing is cluttering and distracting the
user from the useful information they are seeking. Making your writing on a website concise has
many benefits because by doing so you are simultaneously removing noise from the page and
adding clear value for the reader to navigate to what they need. Krug goes on to say that both
what he refers to as “happy talk” and instructions must die. Happy talk is that lovely greeting at a
top of the page that with businesses often attempts to humanize the webpage or give some sort of
anecdote to the reader about the page. Krug’s point is that no one cares, as harsh as that may
seem it’s true when people are browsing a page they want what they’re looking for not the life
story of the business owner. Instructions seemed to me as counterintuitive to omit but the way
Krug explains it makes sense. Instructions are ignored by the vast majority of users including
myself, so all they are is another thing the user has to skim past or click by. Instructions also
shouldn’t be necessary if the user is simply guided properly following the principles previously
mentioned.
The Don’t Make Me Think book has both been an interesting read as well as an astute
look into the design of webpages. The values that Krug implores upon his readers is efficient and
easy to follow, but produces great results in user usability.