Review: Don't Make Me Think

This is a great read which answers most of the questions I constantly deal with on making my brand relatable and website usable. The author illustrates his points with realistic examples and compelling arguments.

Accessibility also comes with ways to make people’s lives better. After all, social and collective goods oil the engine of readership or viewership for a website. When building a website or brand meets the crossroad of profit and morality, that’s where empathy acts in.

As Krug analyses, it’s important to keep in mind people should see a decent human being behind those logistics and information on their monitors. In his words,  “There’s almost always a plausible rationale – and a good, if misguided, intention -behind every usability flaw”

Finally, albeit being the bloodstream of websites, people’s time is precious, so webpage designer should keep in mind that their site visitors are trying to complete tasks with less effort as possible, especially with the evolution of social media like Twitters and people’s shorter attention span. To cite Krug’s third law of usability, “Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left.”

The concept of “satisficing,” as a combination of satisfy and suffice, is also fascinating. Anecdotally,

I agree with picking the first plausible option when facing a list of choices and having to make my decision on the fly, and it oftentimes turns out not to be the best among them.

I have had classes before where peers would look at each other’s website and evaluate. Therefore, I agree with the importance of testing because my personal website— as interactive and inundated with options and routes to those options (or my works) did turn out to be confusing.