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fb6484d
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If there's one thing you learn by working on a lot of different Web sites, it's that almost any design idea--no matter how appallingly bad--can be made usable in the right circumstances, with enough effort.
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Steve Krug |
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82e57fc
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Don't make me think
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Steve Krug |
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c381689
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It doesn't matter how many times I have to click, as long as each click is a mindless, unambiguous choice.
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web-design
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Steve Krug |
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15cf30e
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If you want a great site, you've got to test. After you've worked on a site for even a few weeks, you can't see it freshly anymore. You know too much. The only way to find out if it really works is to test it.
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user-testing
web-design
user-experience
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Steve Krug |
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712bd1e
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Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what's left.
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writing
usability
webdesign
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Steve Krug |
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3d407bf
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And not just the right thing; it's profoundly the right thing to do, because the one argument for accessibility that doesn't get made nearly often enough is how extraordinarily better it makes some people's lives. How many opportunities do we have to dramatically improve people's lives just by doing our job a little better?
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design
ethics
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Steve Krug |
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37ec3f9
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Designers love subtle cues, because subtlety is one of the traits of sophisticated design. But Web users are generally in such a hurry that they routinely miss subtle cues.
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designers
web-design
usability
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Steve Krug |
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9845c55
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Your primary role should be to share what you know, not to tell people how things should be done.
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Steve Krug |
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f84994c
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Your objective should always be to eliminate instructions entirely by making everything self-explanatory, or as close to it as possible. When instructions are absolutely necessary, cut them back to a bare minimum.
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usability
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Steve Krug |
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ebce8e4
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Happy talk must die
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Steve Krug |
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a6fae4b
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In reality, though, most of the time we don't choose the best option--we choose the first reasonable option, a strategy known as satisficing.
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web-design
usability
psychology
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Steve Krug |
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447a523
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The problem is there are no simple "right" answers for most Web design questions (at least not for the important ones). What works is good, integrated design that fills a need--carefully thought out, well executed, and tested."
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designer
user-testing
web-design
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Steve Krug |
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541a50b
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When fixing problems, always do the least you can.
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Steve Krug |
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3e18878
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If you can't make something self-evident, you at least need to make it self-explanatory.
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Steve Krug |
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9f80fa3
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It doesn't matter how many times I have to click, as long as each click is a mindless, unambiguous choice. --KRUG'S SECOND LAW OF USABILITY
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Steve Krug |
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2392d5f
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As a rule, conventions only become conventions if they work.
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web-design
usability
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Steve Krug |
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4c49f36
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The more you watch users carefully and listen to them articulate their intentions, motivations, and thought processes, the more you realize that their individual reactions to Web pages are based on so many variables that attempts to describe users in terms of one-dimensional likes and dislikes are futile and counter-productive. Good design, on the other hand, takes this complexity into account.
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usability
user-centered-design
user-experience
users
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Steve Krug |
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9ab600e
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The main thing you need to know about instructions is that no one is going to read them--at least not until after repeated attempts at "muddling through" have failed."
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Steve Krug |
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e0332d5
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Keep it simple, so you'll keep doing it.
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Steve Krug |
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2e9cfb9
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The fact that the people who built the site didn't care enough to make things obvious--and easy--can erode our confidence in the site and the organization behind it.
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Steve Krug |
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6056d0f
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If something requires a large investment of time--or looks like it will--it's less likely to be used.
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Steve Krug |
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e1d4ac3
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Sometimes time spent reinventing the wheel results in a revolutionary new rolling device. But sometimes it just amounts to time spent reinventing the wheel.
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work
design
invention
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Steve Krug |
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155c393
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Faced with the prospect of following a convention, there's a great temptation for designers to try reinventing the wheel instead, largely because they feel (not incorrectly) that they've been hired to do something new and different, not the same old thing. Not to mention the fact that praise from peers, awards, and high-profile job offers are rarely based on criteria like "best use of conventions." Occasionally, time spent reinventing the w..
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Steve Krug |
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9efff37
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The name of the page will match the words I clicked to get there. In
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Steve Krug |
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b1d70bc
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In the last few years, making things more usable has become almost everybody's responsibility. Visual designers and developers now often find themselves doing things like interaction design (deciding what happens next when the user clicks, taps, or swipes) and information architecture (figuring out how everything should be organized). I
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Steve Krug |
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4466db1
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How many opportunities do we have to dramatically improve people's lives just by doing our job a little better?
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Steve Krug |
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d1f720e
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The problem is, the rewards and the costs of adding more things to the Home page aren't shared equally. The section that's being promoted gets a huge gain in traffic, while the overall loss in effectiveness of the Home page as it gets more cluttered is shared by all sections.
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Steve Krug |
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2fd5bdb
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Demonstrate ROI. In this approach, you gather and analyze data to prove that a usability change you've made resulted in cost savings or additional revenue ("Changing the label on this button increased sales by 0.25%"). There's an excellent book about it: Cost-justifying Usability: An Update for the Internet Age, edited by Randolph Bias and Deborah Mayhew."
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Steve Krug |
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fc7159c
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Nothing important should ever be more than two clicks away
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Steve Krug |
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9d04554
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Or as Jakob Nielsen so aptly put it: The human brain's capacity doesn't change from one year to the next, so the insights from studying human behavior have a very long shelf life. What was difficult for users twenty years ago continues to be difficult today. I
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Steve Krug |
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7656e46
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Another needless source of question marks over people's heads is links and buttons that aren't obviously clickable. As a user, I should never have to devote a millisecond of thought to whether things are clickable--or not.
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Steve Krug |
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289d548
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usability is about people and how they understand and use things, not about technology.
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Steve Krug |
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acade0d
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A person of average (or even below average) ability and experience can figure out how to use the thing to accomplish something without it being more trouble than it's worth. Take my word for it: It's really that simple.
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Steve Krug |
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a9f665e
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You actually can be too rich or too thin
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Steve Krug |
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bf2eb8f
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Sincerity: that's the hard part. If you can fake that, the rest is easy.
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Steve Krug |
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a8b7eea
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The problem is there are no simple "right" answers for most Web design questions (at least not for the important ones). What works is good, integrated design that fills a need--carefully thought out, well executed, and tested. That"
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Steve Krug |
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0b3e0d8
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A person of average (or even below average) ability and experience can figure out how to use the thing to accomplish something without it being more trouble than it's worth. Take
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Steve Krug |
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4dc9a82
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Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what's left. --KRUG'S THIRD LAW OF USABILITY Of
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Steve Krug |
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ea3d051
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There's almost always a plausible rationale--and a good, if misguided, intention--behind every usability flaw. Another
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Steve Krug |
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5b7a03a
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Making every page or screen self-evident is like having good lighting in a store: it just makes everything seem better.
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Steve Krug |
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1637c56
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I usually call these endless discussions "religious debates," because they have a lot in common with most discussions of religion and politics: They consist largely of people expressing strongly held personal beliefs about things that can't be proven--supposedly in the interest of agreeing on the best way to do something important"
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Steve Krug |
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3d55f5b
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When we're creating sites, we act as though people are going to pore over each page, reading all of our carefully crafted text, figuring out how we've organized things, and weighing their options before deciding which link to click. What
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Steve Krug |
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3248502
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Se voce quer ter uma boa vida, acerte na hora de casar.
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Steve Krug |
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70b03f9
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the main thing it usually ends up doing is revealing that the things they were arguing about weren't all that important. People often test to decide which color drapes are best, only to learn that they forgot to put windows in the room.
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Steve Krug |