The basic principles are the same even if the landscape has changed, because usability is about people and how they understand and use things, not about technology. And while technology often changes quickly, people change very slowly. (Location 153)
If something is usable—whether it’s a Web site, a remote control, or a revolving door—it means that 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. (Location 277)
When you’re creating a site, your job is to get rid of the question marks. (Location 307)
The point is that every question mark adds to our cognitive workload, distracting our attention from the task at hand. The distractions may be slight but they add up, especially if it’s something we do all the time like deciding what to click on. (Location 324)
We’re thinking “great literature” (or at least “product brochure”), while the user’s reality is much closer to “billboard going by at 60 miles an hour.” (Location 385)
FACT OF LIFE #1: We don’t read pages. We scan them. (Location 392)
FACT OF LIFE #2: We don’t make optimal choices. We satisfice. (Location 413)
When we’re designing pages, we tend to assume that users will scan the page, consider all of the available options, and choose the best one. 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.1 As soon as we find a link that seems like it might lead to what we’re looking for, there’s a very good chance that we’ll click it. (Location 414)
(Back is the most-used button in Web browsers.) (Location 435)
FACT OF LIFE #3: We don’t figure out how things work. We muddle through. (Location 443)
Faced with any sort of technology, very few people take the time to read instructions. Instead, we forge ahead and muddle through, making up our own vaguely plausible stories about what we’re doing and why it works. (Location 447)
My recommendation: Innovate when you know you have a better idea, but take advantage of conventions when you don’t. (Location 548)
It’s not important to us. For most of us, it doesn’t matter to us whether we understand how things work, as long as we can use them. It’s not for lack of intelligence, but for lack of caring. It’s just not important to us. (Location 465)
You often hear consistency cited as an absolute good. People win a lot of design arguments just by saying “We can’t do that. It wouldn’t be consistent.” (Location 559)
As we scan a page, we’re looking for a variety of visual cues that identify things as clickable (or “tappable” (Location 610)
As Don Norman explains so enjoyably in his recently updated usability classic The Design of Everyday Things, we’re constantly parsing our environment (Location 616)
If you’re using more than one level of heading, make sure there’s an obvious, impossible-to-miss visual distinction between them. You can do this by making each higher level larger or by leaving more space above it. (Location 654)
Even more important: Don’t let your headings float. Make sure they’re closer to the section they introduce than to the section they follow. This makes a huge difference. (Location 658)
Use bulleted lists. Think of it this way: Almost anything that can be a bulleted list probably should be. (Location 669)
Highlight key terms. Much page scanning consists of looking for key words and phrases. Formatting the most important ones in bold where they first appear in the text makes them easier to find. (Location 675)
If you really want to learn about making content scannable (or about anything related to writing for screens in general), run, do not walk, to an Internet-connected device and order Ginny Redish’s book Letting Go of the Words. (Location 678)
But over time I’ve come to think that what really counts is not the number of clicks it takes me to get to what I want (although there are limits), but rather how hard each click is—the amount of thought required and the amount of uncertainty about whether I’m making the right choice. (Location 689)
Some people (Jakob Nielsen calls them “search-dominant” users) will almost always look for a search box as soon as they enter a site. (These may be the same people who look for the nearest clerk as soon as they enter a store.) (Location 839)
If you choose to browse, you make your way through a hierarchy, using signs to guide you. (Location 845)
Home pages is so important. Home pages are—comparatively—fixed places. When you’re in a site, the Home page is like the North Star. Being able to click Home gives you a fresh start. (Location 886)
most users will ignore any other instructions anyway.) (Location 905)
conventions that have evolved over time like street signs, page (Location 911)
Just having the navigation appear in the same place on every page with a consistent look gives you instant confirmation that you’re still in the same site—which is more important than you might think. And keeping it the same throughout the site means that (hopefully) you only have to figure out how it works once. (Location 928)
For instance, when I’m paying for my purchases on an e-commerce site, you don’t really want me to do anything but finish filling in the forms. The same is true when I’m registering, subscribing, giving (Location 936)
For these pages, it’s useful to have a minimal version of the persistent navigation (Location 938)
This site Sections of this site Subsections Sub-subsections, etc. This page Areas of this page Items on this page (Location 948)
And unless there’s very little reason to search your site, it should be a search box. (Location 997)
. I think this is one of the most common problems in Web design (especially in larger sites): failing to give the lower-level navigation the same attention as the top. (Location 1025)
The moral? It’s vital to have sample pages that show the navigation for all the potential levels of the site before you start arguing about the color scheme. (Location 1038)
Page names are the street signs of the Web. Just as with street signs, when things are going well I may not notice page names at all. (Location 1050)
In other words, if I click on a link or button that says “Hot mashed potatoes,” the site will take me to a page named “Hot mashed potatoes.” It may seem trivial, but it’s actually a crucial agreement. (Location 1066)
The most common failing of “You are here” indicators is that they’re too subtle. They need to stand out; (Location 1084)
Tabs are one of the very few cases where using a physical metaphor in a user interface actually works. (Location 1116)
When I do usability tests, I’m surprised at how often people can overlook horizontal navigation bars at the top of a Web page. But tabs are so visually distinctive that they’re hard to overlook. (Location 1122)
For tabs to work to full effect, the graphics have to create the visual illusion that the active tab is in front of the other tabs. (Location 1128)
To create this illusion, the active tab needs to be a different color or contrasting shade, and it has to physically connect with the space below it. (Location 1130)
If the page is well designed, when your vision clears you should be able to answer these questions without hesitation: What site is this? (Site ID) What page am I on? (Page name) What are the major sections of this site? (Sections) What are my options at this level? (Local navigation) Where am I in the scheme of things? (“You are here” indicators) How can I search? (Location 1136)
The Welcome blurb. The Welcome blurb is a terse description of the site, displayed in a prominent block on the Home page, usually at the top left or center of the content space so it’s the first thing that catches your eye. (Location 1275)
Use as much space as necessary. The temptation is to not want to use any space because (a) you can’t imagine that anybody doesn’t know what this site is, and (b) everyone’s clamoring to use the Home page space for other purposes. (Location 1285)
Don’t use a mission statement as a Welcome blurb. Many sites fill their Home page with their corporate mission statement that sounds like it was written by a Miss America finalist. (Location 1297)
Good taglines are just long enough, but not too long. Six to eight words seem to be long enough to convey a full thought, but short enough to absorb easily. (Location 1317)
A motto expresses a guiding principle, a goal, or an ideal, but a tagline conveys a value proposition. (Location 1327)
The only problem is, there is no Average User. In fact, all of the time I’ve spent watching people use the Web has led me to the opposite conclusion: ALL WEB USERS ARE UNIQUE AND ALL WEB USE IS BASICALLY IDIOSYNCRATIC (Location 1443)
The point is, it’s not productive to ask questions like “Do most people like pull-down menus?” The right kind of question to ask is “Does this pull-down, with these items and this wording in this context on this page create a good experience for most people who are likely to use this site?” (Location 1457)
And there’s really only one way to answer that kind of question: testing. (Location 1460)
Repeat after me: Focus groups are not usability tests. (Location 1487)
In a focus group, a small group of people (usually 5 to 10) sit around a table and talk about things, like their opinions (Location 1496)
Usability tests are about watching one person at a time try to use something (whether it’s a Web site, (Location 1499)
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 watch other people try to use it. (Location 1512)
Testing one user early in the project is better than testing 50 near the end. (Location 1531)
You’ll always find more problems than you have the resources to fix, so it’s very important that you focus on fixing the most serious ones first. (Location 1593)
For many sites, you can do a lot of your testing with almost anybody. (Location 1603)
If you’re going to do your own recruiting, I recommend that you download the Nielsen Norman Group’s free 147-page report How to Recruit Participants for Usability Studies.4 You don’t have to read it all, but it’s an excellent source of advice. (Location 1626)
One of the most valuable things about doing usability testing is the effect it can have on the observers. (Location 1653)
During the break after each test session, observers need to write down the three most serious usability problems they noticed during that session so they can share them in the debriefing. (Location 1660)
Even before you begin designing your site, for instance, it’s a good idea to do a test of competitive sites. They may be actual competitors, or they may just be sites that have the same style, (Location 1667)
if you’re testing a prototype of a login process, the tasks might be Create an account Log in using an existing username and password Retrieve a forgotten password Retrieve a forgotten username Change answer to a security question (Location 1679)
It’s much better, for instance, to say “Find a book you want to buy, or a book you bought recently” than “Find a cookbook for under $14.” (Location 1689)
FOCUS RUTHLESSLY ON FIXING THE MOST SERIOUS PROBLEMS FIRST (Location 1874)
You don’t have to fix each problem perfectly or completely. You just have to do something—often just a tweak—that will take it out of the category of “serious problem.” (Location 1887)
Services like UserTesting.com provide people who will record themselves doing a usability test. You simply send in your tasks and a link to your site, (Location 1917)
In one sense, the answer is: Not much. The basic principles are still the same. If anything, people are moving faster and reading even less on small screens. (Location 1961)
Which parts do you leave out? One approach was Mobile First. Instead of designing a full-featured (and perhaps bloated) version of your Web site first and then paring it down to create the mobile version, you design the mobile version first based on the features and content that are most important to your users. Then you add on more features and content to create the desktop/full version. (Location 2009)
Developers learned long ago that trying to create separate versions of anything—keeping two sets of books, so to speak—is a surefire path to madness. (Location 2039)
my definition of usability: A person of average (or even below average) ability and experience can figure out how to use the thing [i.e., it’s learnable] to accomplish something [effective] without it being more trouble than it’s worth [efficient]. (Location 2117)
But mirroring isn’t a good way to watch tests done on touch screen devices, because you can’t see the gestures and taps the participant is making. (Location 2217)
(I tell people to ignore all comments that users make about colors during a user test, unless three out of four people use a word like “puke” to describe the color scheme. Then it’s worth rethinking. (Location 2362)
the best way to learn how to make anything more usable is to watch people actually try to use it. (Location 2503)
in an article titled “Guidelines for Accessible and Usable Web Sites: Observing Users Who Work with Screen Readers.” (Location 2508)
A Web for Everyone: Designing Accessible User Experiences by Sarah Horton and Whitney Quesenbery. (Location 2525)
Leah Buley’s The User Experience Team of One: A Research and Design Survival Guide is written specifically for people who are “the only person in your company (Location 2649)
I hope you’ll check in at my Web site stevekrug.com from time to time, and always feel free to send me email at stevekrug@gmail.com. I can promise you I will read it and appreciate it, even if I can’t always find enough time to reply. (Location 2714)