Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
Highlights
Things that make us think
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.
Things that make us think
And as a rule, people don’t like to puzzle over how to do things. They enjoy puzzles in their place—when they want to be entertained or diverted or challenged—but not when they’re trying to find out what time their dry cleaner closes. 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.
You can’t make everything self-evident
Here’s the rule: If you can’t make something self-evident, you at least need to make it self-explanatory.
Why is all of this so important?
Using a site that doesn’t make us think about unimportant things feels effortless, whereas puzzling over things that don’t matter to us tends to sap our energy and enthusiasm—and time.
FACT OF LIFE #1: We don’t read pages. We scan them.
we tend to focus on words and phrases that seem to match (a) the task at hand or (b) our current or ongoing personal interests. And of course, (c) the trigger words that are hardwired into our nervous systems, like “Free,” “Sale,” and “Sex,” and our own name.
FACT OF LIFE #2: We don’t make optimal choices. We satisfice.
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.
FACT OF LIFE #2: We don’t make optimal choices. We satisfice.
Optimizing is hard, and it takes a long time. Satisficing is more efficient.
FACT OF LIFE #2: We don’t make optimal choices. We satisfice.
the penalty for guessing wrong on a Web site is usually only a click or two of the Back button, making satisficing an effective strategy. (Back is the most-used button in Web browsers.
FACT OF LIFE #2: We don’t make optimal choices. We satisfice.
this is not to say that users never weigh options before they click. It depends on things like their frame of mind, how pressed they are for time, and how much confidence they have in the site
FACT OF LIFE #3: We don’t figure out how things work. We muddle through.
people use things all the time without understanding how they work, or with completely wrong-headed ideas about how they work.
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.
FACT OF LIFE #3: We don’t figure out how things work. We muddle through.
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.3
FACT OF LIFE #3: We don’t figure out how things work. We muddle through.
Once we find something that works—no matter how badly—we tend not to look for a better way. We’ll use a better way if we stumble across one, but we seldom look for one.
Conventions are your friends
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.
Conventions are your friends
If you’re not going to use an existing Web convention, you need to be sure that what you’re replacing it with either (a) is so clear and self-explanatory that there’s no learning curve—so it’s as good as the convention, or (b) adds so much value that it’s worth a small learning curve
Conventions are your friends
My recommendation: Innovate when you know you have a better idea, but take advantage of conventions when you don’t.
Create effective visual hierarchies
Here’s the rule to keep in mind:
CLARITY TRUMPS CONSISTENCY
If you can make something significantly clearer by making it slightly inconsistent, choose in favor of clarity.
Create effective visual hierarchies
Things that are related logically are related visually. For instance, you can show that things are similar by grouping them together under a heading, displaying them in the same visual style, or putting them all in a clearly defined area.
Create effective visual hierarchies
The more important something is, the more prominent it is
Break up pages into clearly defined areas
Eye-tracking studies of Web page scanning suggest that users decide very quickly in their initial glances which parts of the page are likely to have useful information and then rarely look at the other parts—almost as though they weren’t there. (Banner blindness—the ability of users to completely ignore areas they think will contain ads—is just the extreme case.)
Break up pages into clearly defined areas
Dividing the page into clearly defined areas is important because it allows users to decide quickly which areas of the page to focus on and which areas they can safely ignore.
Keep the noise down to a dull roar
There are really three different kinds of noise:
Shouting. When everything on the page is clamoring for your attention, the effect can be overwhelming: Lots of invitations to buy! Lots of exclamation points, different typefaces, and bright colors! Automated slideshows, animation, pop-ups, and the never-ending array of new attention-grabbing ad formats!
The truth is, everything can’t be important. Shouting is usually the result of a failure to make tough decisions about which elements are really the most important and then create a visual hierarchy that guides users to them first.
Disorganization. Some pages look like a room that’s been ransacked, with things strewn everywhere. This is a sure sign that the designer doesn’t understand the importance of using grids to align the elements on a page.
Clutter. We’ve all seen pages—especially Home pages—that just have too much stuff. The net effect is the same as when your email inbox is flooded with things like newsletters from sites that have decided that your one contact with them has made you lifelong friends: It’s hard to find and focus on the messages you actually care about. You end up with what engineers call a low signal-to-noise ratio: Lots of noise, not much information, and the noise obscures the useful stuff.
Format text to support scanning
If you’re using more than one level of heading, make sure there’s an obvious, impossible-to-miss visual distinction between them
Format text to support scanning
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.
Format text to support scanning
Keep paragraphs short. Long paragraphs confront the reader with what Caroline Jarrett and Ginny Redish call a “wall of words.” They’re daunting
Format text to support scanning
Almost anything that can be a bulleted list probably should be. Just look at your paragraphs for any series of items separated by commas or semicolons and you’ll find likely candidates.
Chapter 4. Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral?
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
Chapter 4. Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral?
On the face of it, “number of clicks to get anywhere” seems like a useful metric. 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.