Krug's approach to web design

The first time I heard about Steve Krug's internet design principles was quite recently in a Simon Whistler video about the history of YouTube: "YouTube did one thing that set them apart from all the others at every level, from Creator to viewer, they adhered to Steve Krug's famous design principle of 'Don't Make me Think'" (Today I Found Out, 2023, 14:21).

Hah. Who is this Steve Krug? I headed off to the library to find out.

It turns out that Steve Krug wrote a fairly seminal book on web design back in 2000 called "Don't Make Me Think", which was updated and re-released in 2014. I got a revised edition and had a scroll through.

The key piece of advice to designers is that "When you’re creating a site, your job is to get rid of the [user's] question[s]" before they even know they have questions (Krug, 2014, p. 13). To make sites so intuitive to use; buttons, links and directions so clickable that users do not stumble in navigating the site. Yes: intuitive usability is a KEY piece of good design. 

Further, it is noted that users "don’t like to puzzle over how to do things" (p. 15), and that a build up of distractions where we can't work out how we got to where we ended up will "erode our confidence in the site and the organization behind it" (p. 15). Ouch. 

This book is considered by many a seminal text in web user design (da Silva Leite, 2021), noting that elements which assist "the User Experience [are to] take advantage of conventions, create effective visual hierarchies, break the pages up into clearly defined areas, make it obvious what is clickable, eliminate distractions, format content to support scanning" (p. 14). None of this is rocket science, but it is surprising how often those cues are not clearly delivered to the user.

This book, while old, is still useful. Check it out.

Sam

References:

da Silva Leite, J. R. G. (2021). Advantages of Using User Experience Design Concepts in the Creation of E-Learning Courses. [Master's thesis, University of Lisbon]. https://repositorio.ul.pt/bitstream/10451/48201/1/ulfpie054300_tm.pdf

Krug, S. (2014). Don't Make Me Think: A common sense approach to web and mobile usability (Revised ed.). Pearson Education.

Today I Found Out. (2023, November 18). What was the First YouTube Video and How Did YouTube Start? [video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/7GC9v-EYcsQ