Yes, this is an entry-level book, targeted at the people who need it most: the frontline of Web developers and "designers". The content of the 2nd edition could be updated, but Krug's non-nonsense, easy-to-read approach still makes Don't Make Me Think one of the first books I recommend to my Web development students.

Everyone who designs web apps should have a copy of this book.


It changes how you think about Interactive architecture and page usage.

A staple book that has standardized so many design and usability concepts. It isn't that long, but it is so dead-on with usability that this as close to the the Bible you can get for web usability. Full color pages and tons of practical examples make it easy to associate with problems many regular people face. Web interfaces should be mind-numbingly simple and functionality should always take precedence over aesthetics. Worth reading every couple of years to reconnect to the core foundation of what websites are REALLY about. My highest possible rating.

It's a great book for introducing the mindset of web usability. It doesn't overload you with information, but shows you how to think when developing a web app.

I'll bet that every person who builds a web site, personal or commercial, big or small, thinks that, even if it has a few faults, it's pretty good. I'm not certain that people who visit sites have as charitable a view. Steve Krug believes that the visitors' views could be improved with a common sense approach to web usability.

The theme is set out in the title. Web users don't want to have to think. In order to incorporate that fact into web sites, Krug sets out some simple concepts for web designers to follow. I hesitate to list these rules because they are so simple that if you read a summary here, and pay attention to them, you almost don't need to buy this book. But Krug's skill is in convincing you that you should take his advice, and suggesting how to implement it. His guidance is simple, including: design pages for scanning, not reading; make sure the user knows where he is on the site through navigation design; and test sites with real users.

The author suggests that the book is so short it can be read on a longish airplane ride. But the points he makes are so important that everyone responsible for a web site, whether designer or CEO needs to be reminded of them. I know that I consider myself pretty savvy when it comes to usability, but I came up with several tips for quickly improving my web site as I read the book. (I also saw a few weaknesses in my site that the author identified that weren't so easy to correct quickly, but I'm working on those problems.) Moreover, while I didn't laugh out loud, I found the book so good natured that it was easy to become absorbed.

The book has little of a technical nature about browsers or web authoring software, but instead deals with a few broad principles of web usability. That's enough reason to recommend that everyone with a web site of any kind should read this book, especially since it is so easy to go through. I can't guarantee you will find something of use, but I'd love to get your URL if you don't.

I am a web UI developer and I have bought a lot of books already including (theory and implementation books)but no book has been as useful as this book so far.

I can't honestly say that I learned a lot from this book, but I considered it to be a very accessible book, and it explains the topic well, along with sharing some important ideas and some specific recommendations. I'm glad I read it, although it hasn't really altered the way I work very much.

Many of Krug's findings are very true and helpful to analyzing the effectiveness and usefulness of a website! I appreciated the short length of the book, but at times still found myself skimming some parts. Overall a worthwhile read!

I bought and read this book a few years ago, and when I picked it up for a second read-through last week, I realized that even though the book deals with "timeless" topics, it is starting to be a bit dated. Especially the examples and illustrations put it out of date.

The text and thoughts behind the process are still valid, but needs better reference material to be relevant for today. If you can pick it up cheap, then it is still a good read/buy though.

i bought the book based on lot of those positive responses in amazon, also another books was referring to it. well, if you are totally new to web design and usability - maybe this is a good place to look at - but, most of things are little too common, you can work them out yourself. Annoying are also those comics & cartoon styles inside the book - reminds me a schoolbooks for a foreign language study. Too basic. really. and the amazon also changed a design, but a one section of a book is totally devoted on that :(. no more such tabs at amazon....as he writes in a book

Everyone in our IT department that has anything to do with our products SDLC had to read this book. At first I was a little reluctant since it was "required", however, the book is a very good read. It was easy to understand and a pretty quick read. The author used plain English and broke down anything that might be new to the "usability newbie". If you are looking for a book to get you started trying to do a little usability testing yourself, then this book is for you. However, if you have some usability experience - this book is probably a little too elementary for you.

This is a great book with good suggestions for anyone involved in Internet sales or development. Without question, you can find a more technical book out there ~ but they are so dry and boring its hard to stay awake while reading them. Not with this book. It is quick and easy to read. A straight forward easy to understand book.

The title is very accurate

Yes, this book makes me think contrary to the title. And I assume that's what the author wanted, and he lives up to it. I am happy I got this one.

This is a very helpful book for web design. A very easy (and short) read also independent of any technology.

One of the must have books on my reference shelf is "Don't Make Me Think, A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability" by Steve Krug. I've recommended this book to many people, so I thought it was about time to give it a proper review.

One of the things that first drew me to this book when it first appeared was the subtitle. I've said it again and again, but it bears repeating...much of the "science" of good UI design is just common sense. This begs the question as to why some people find it so hard, and I think the answer lies in the idea of common sense in our society. We are so busy being busy that oftentimes we don't slow down enough to really *think* about a problem and thus the common sense solution eludes us. A book like "Don't Make Me Think" is a great way to make you put on the brakes a little and examine the fundamental principles of usability. For those of you that aren't web developers, don't be scared off. Although the focus of Mr. Krug's book is web design, most of the concepts are equally extensible to other software design work

If you've not read any books on interface design or usability before, this book provides the perfect intro into that world. As he mentions in the forward, this book is for those people or companies that don't have a usability professional on board or can't hire one for some reason or another. By taking the ideas introduced in "Don't Make Me Think" you can be on your way to doing this work yourself very quickly.

The author's writing style is both casual and witty and he follows the advice of his title when explaining new concepts, breaking it down so you can understand the underlying psychology without getting bogged down in terminology or theory. Chapter 1 begins with an introduction to what the author calls "Krug's First Law of Usability": "Don't Make Me Think". Simply put, this means that your ultimate goal is to design your interface so that when you look at it, it is immediately evident what you can do and how you go about doing it. In this chapter, Krug explores some of the elements of design that put more cognitive load on us than is necessary and then demonstrates ways to reduce this load. This is done through both the narrative as well as excellent graphics which simply but elegantly display his point.

Chapters 2 through 5 begin the exploration of how we really go about using an interface and set forth the guiding principles we need to be thinking about when designing. First, Krug talks about the difference in what we design for (reading, more reading and even more reading in a set pattern) vs. the reality of how people scan through an interface in a seemingly chaotic way. He then extends on the lessons learned here by helping you understand the techniques you can use to design interfaces for scanning rather than reading. He addresses five important things you can do to achieve the goal of capturing user eyeballs as much as possible: creating a clear visual hierarchy, breaking pages into clearly defined areas, minimizing ui noise, making clickable elements obviously clickable and taking advantage of established UI conventions. This first section wraps up with a discussion of why we like "mindless" choices and the importance of good copywriting and how you need to omit all but the essential words in your design.

Chapters 6 and 7 focus on the elements that Krug believes you must get right in your design. Chapter 6 is concerned with laying out the fundamentals behind good navigation. Since this is an area I call a lot of bad designs out on, it's one that I really enjoyed. Krug discusses some of the basic concepts of navigation and why navigation is so important to a user. He deconstructs various navigation conventions and explains why they work or don't work effectively. He also addresses the good use of search, page names, breadcrumbs, and the tab metaphor. Chapter 6 ends with a number of great graphics which show several sites as they were designed and the author's analysis of what was wrong. He then shows a revised version based on what he would do and in some cases also shows the company's own effort at making some improvements. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, so it would be good for the reader to spend some time pouring over these excellent examples. Chapter 7 is devoted to the design of the homepage and how to best design that important first impression. As in Chapter 6, there are a lot of great "before and after" examples to round out the theory.

The next two chapters of "Don't Make Me Think" are concerned with how you make sure you did the right things in your design. That is, they focus on one of my favorite topics, the idea of usability testing. In particular, Krug wants the user to walk away after reading these chapters realizing that usability testing is within reach of every single developer out there. Sure, in the ideal world we'd all have a department of usability experts that are there to critique our designs and help us craft the most user-friendly interfaces possible, but we all know that our day to day jobs are far from the ideal world. Still, Krug argues, you can find value in any amount of testing you can do. Krug espouses some common sense thoughts about usability testing, such as the idea that it is an iterative process, that you should test early and often and that testing even one user is better than testing none. Once he convinces you of the importance of usability testing, he presents some simple to follow instructions on how you can carry out your own tests. As he points out, it doesn't have to be expensive or fancy. You really can do this stuff on a shoestring budget. Chapter 9 ends with a sample excerpt from a test session, which in my opinion is probably worth the cost of the book right there.

Krug wraps up the final chapters of the book with a focus on the larger concerns of interface design, such as why usability should be considered a common courtesy, where accessibility comes into the picture and how to deal with a boss that "doesn't get it". If you just want to cut to the chase and start improving your designs right away you can skip these chapters, but they do a nice job of summarizing at a high level many of the salient points of the book.

All in all, "Don't Make Me Think" is a thoroughly enjoyable read and a very practical book for those that aspire to create better interfaces for their users. Coming in at just under 200 pages with lots of clear illustrations, you can probably read this book in a couple of evenings, which is great for those of us intimidated by the 1000 page tomes that populate the computer section in most bookstores. Probably the best part of "Don't Make Me Think" is that it applicable to the work you are doing today. You can read a chapter or two and immediately start putting the concepts into practice and the value you'll get as you do so far exceeds the book's cover price. "Don't Make Me Think" is highly recommended and I hope you make the decision to add it to your reading list today. You don't even have to think about it! :-)

I was in the middle of redesigning one of my own web sites, and had a coupon to redeem for Amazon, so I picked up this book. Steve does a great job with this book. Very well written, concise, and to the point. For someone like me, who is an amateur web designer (just doing several sites of my own), this was just what I needed to get me thinking about how usable my site is, and how people really use web sites.

There are no specific coding examples, or HTML, or CSS, or anything like that. It's not meant to be a book to teach you how to actually build the web site with HTML or CSS. Instead, it is more of a higher level, overall picture, type of thing. That's just what I wanted, and I wasn't disappointed.

It made me go back and rethink how I was laying out some things on my web site, and how I always include WAY too much text. I'll be using a lot of the ideas in this book to eventually go back and rework all of my sites!

A nicely crafted book-like this one-that falls apart with no overuse is like a nice piece of clothing that won't stand the first wash. And we are not taking about cheap clothing here. But anyway, let's focus on what matters most: the content. I was expecting more from the book, but overall I don't feel disappointed. I wouldn't call the book simplistic because it heavily relies on common sense. After all, you don't have to go very far on the web to find sites where common sense seems to be the least used of all senses. The chapter on usability testing was particularly useful to me. And although nothing in the book was particularly striking or illuminating, I felt it made a positive contribution to my knowledge on the subject.

If you're involved in developing (as myself) or designing web-sites (or any other software intended for actual people), this book will give you helpful insights in the usability issues you are bound to encounter.

The book is very well written, and is fun to read.

"Don't Make Me Think" refers to the way people tend to use the web: they don't read they scan. That means that your site needs to be organized to make identification and navigation as instinctive as possible. Having an efficient navigation system and laying out your content to clearly reveal the embedded hierarchy should go a long way towards achieving this goal. Don't forget a good search function.

One of the main point the author want's you to get is that having external users to test your site will give you valuable insights on how you can make it work for them. He walks us through such a test scenario, which is quite useful.

There is also a chapter on accessibility, which is nice and which gives us an easy way to make our site quite accessible to most. My favorite idea is to add a "skip to main content" link to the top of all pages. By styling it with a "display: none" it won't affect any layout would be very useful for blind people using screen readers. Food for hought.

Classification is one topic on which I disagree with the author though it's only noted in a footnote. His view is that "things" should live in one place on your site and if necessary use cross-references to bring people there. I think that "things" should live in all the probable places a user might want to look for it. On one side you have a hierarchy on the other you have a tagging system. Given growing popularity and ubiquity of tags, I think that this won't be much of a stretch for anyone in the near future.

This book was certainly worth reading. I have learnt quite a few things and I recommend it to all web developers.

A very accurate and realistic look at the sociology behind user interface development and philosophies on how to deal with it. I recommend this book to all of my front-end developers.

An excellent resource for anyone who has any input into web design. Recommended to me by a designer and I find it very usable and an easy, fun read.

Brilliant book. Very easy to read and digest, infact wonderful usability. I highly recommend this to anyone who builds website from the beginner to the advanced professional.

This is a great book on web usability that is as entertaining as it is informative!

Krug's first law of usability is the title of the book, "Don't make me think!" As his wife describes it, "If something is hard to use, I just don't use it much." And I think that's true for a lot of us.

He notes that most people just scan a page, so you need to act like you're designing billboards when you design your website. He then goes on to provide lots of tips on how to do that.

He also emphasizes cutting out unnecessary words...or as he puts it, "happy talk must die."

This guy is really funny and he definitely knows his stuff. Regardless of whether you're trying to set up your first website or web design is something you do for a living, you'll find everything you need (and nothing you don't) in this great guide to web usability.

This is a great book on web usability that is as entertaining as it is informative!

Krug's first law of usability is the title of the book, "Don't make me think!" As his wife describes it, "If something is hard to use, I just don't use it much." And I think that's true for a lot of us.

He notes that most people just scan a page, so you need to act like you're designing billboards when you design your website. He then goes on to provide lots of tips on how to do that.

He also emphasizes cutting out unnecessary words...or as he puts it, "happy talk must die."

This guy is really funny and he definitely knows his stuff. Regardless of whether you're trying to set up your first website or web design is something you do for a living, you'll find everything you need (and nothing you don't) in this great guide to web usability.

Kara Lane, author of Wake Up to Powerful Living: 12 Principles to Transform Your Life!

For any developer or designer who cares about user experience (and doing a better job), this is your book! No techie stuff. Just clear, to-the-point, and well-illustrated examples of what a user really does and the end-results you want to attain to make their experience a pleasant one.

It breaks my heart to give this book anything less than five stars, but the binding is horrible! I have about a dozen segments of the book that all broke away from the hard and inflexible binding as I read the book. Use extreme care - the publishers did not design this binding to lay flat in any way!

Excellent book.

Being an internet user, i'm used to the tipical usability flaws on web applications. Being a developer, i'm used to write programs that work and also, to blame users that "don't get it". Well, after reading this book, turns out i'm now a smarter user and a better developer.

Quoting the book: "Like a lot of common sense, it's not necessarily obvious until after someone's pointed it out to you". As a developer, i needed it. I've read it in 2 days (large fonts are used).

The bookbinding however is not very good (pages are not very well attached).

This is an expensive book (list price) for something less than 200 pages. Nonetheless the advice within it is worth every penny. I won't repeat what other reviewers have to say about the content. But please note that my copy fell apart before I'd finished the first read. The binding is awful. The pages fell out in ever increasing chunks until all I now have left is the cover and a bunch of sections that I have to keep stuffing back when I put the book away. And, it's a book that I refer to frequently.

This book has a no nonsense approach to web usability. Krug puts into words what we take for granted when both using AND designing web pages.

This book are useful to anyone planning any sort of process which other people will use -- not just web pages.

I bought this book because I was working on a related problem for a consulting firm -- how to integrate research and documentation of said research. The insights from this book into how people use a computer-based system allowed me to identify what was wrong with all of the proposed solutions -- such as software designed to handle references, like EndNote. The proposed solutions were too complex, requiring too much new learning and too many steps.

In the end we saved thousands of dollars by developing a very simple set of rules for putting together an excel spreadsheet for gathering and sourcing qualitative information -- easy to open, easy to operate, everyone already knows how to use the software.

The book was most useful because I was able to wave it in the air and announce "people won't use that feature" as we discussed different options. It was an antidote to the common tendency to feel that our co-workers "aught" or "should" do their work in a particular fashion. E.g. "Since documentation is important, people should be willing to spend some time doing it."

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, It's not one that I probably would have purchased on my own, but I had some expense account money to spend and it looked good. I gave it a shot, and now wish I'd ordered sooner. It's a great introduction to web usability, it's got lots of actionable information that will provide anyone working with the web some tips and help to steer things in the right direction.

I highly recommend it.

I've been developing web pages for around 7 years. The only thing I can say is I can't believe I never researched usability until now. This book definitely opened my eyes to a whole new aspect of the world of web design.

If you are new to web usability, or if you're a "one stop shop" or a "one-man show", I highly recommend this book. If you're new to web development, I HIGHLY recommend this book - I wish I had learned about usability from day one!

If you're already familiar with web usability or work as part of a team, this book may not be as useful as some of the other books out there.

The only thing that kept this book from getting five stars is that the first 40 or so pages fell out of the binding (but stayed together, thankfully.. I was sort of able to glue them back in) within the first few days. I did leave the book open which placed stress on the spine, but still... I've never had that happen to me with any book before. Hopefully a future version will solve this little problem.

I would recomend this book to anyone who wants to design websites. It is very important for usability. It was designed to be a quick read and is easy to understand. The title of the book even helps me when I'm designing because I think the user doesn't want to have to think about how to navagate through a website, they just want to do what they have to do and move on.

This book mostly focuses on e-commerce sites but it still has some good tips that may apply to any website.

This book doesn't teach you HTML or any programing it is strictly usability.

This book is very fun and easy to read. The author gives great usability tips..I definitely recommend it.

I use this book as a "must read" for my Visual Design class. It is a great introductory book of design principle for interactive media and the way we use the web. It points out the obvious in an understandable way and keeps my students hooked (which is sometimes hard to do!). Hilarious and easy to follow. I read the entire book on a 2 hour flight...and I don't mind reading it again each semester.

This book is full of useful information and sound advice for interface designers. It gets right to the meat of things, which is great for a technical book because no one reads this stuff for pleasure.

the book came immediately, and since i should have ordered it 2 weeks earlier for homework, that was a Good Thing. yay!

If you are a web designer or in the industry this is a must have for helping you get into the head of the user and how to better design your site for them.

Steve Krug flawlessly (and colorfully) presents the need for website usability testing and affordable, easy-to-implement strategies for making your site function more efficiently, no matter the number of users. Steve's strategies seem so basic, but anyone who uses the web at all knows that most sites have at least some sort flaw when it comes to usability. Steve's recommendations are by no means a panacea for a site's problems, but they're a great start. Anyone who writes for, develops content for or administers a website at work or home needs to read (and re-read) this book. Steve also happens to be a very nice guy and will most certainly respond if you have any questions for him.

I am definitely not a usability expert but I was expecting much more substance from a "self proclaimed" expert. The examples are so obvious, dumbed down and old (from 1999-2000). I think this book should entirely be written with Web 2.0 in mind. I agree that design principles do not change over time, and this book is not about technology, but users expect more and more with new technologies. While some design patterns stay the same, some evolve and become expected with the advent of newer technologies.

Don't waste your time with this book, and buy a more recently written book for people who really want to know about usability.

This book is excellent. It's very accessible and easy reading without being superficial. It's not a usability cookbook, it actually makes you understand its principles and gives you critical sense to analyze any website and see what's wrong (or right) with it.
I just couldn't find any negative points about the book.

I'm not a designer and I would by nature make many of the mistakes Krug points out in this great book. Krug's reasoning and reasoned approach that he presents in this book is invaluable.

This book on internet usability has not only changed the way I design websites, it has changed my thinking on many areas of life. The other day I was asked to review a print media item and I kept saying to the designer - "Don't Make Me Think!" The idea of designing easy to use, simple to understand websites is so simple that it is often overlooked. This is a fantastic read. I'm halfway through my second reading of it.

As it promises, Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think: 2nd Edition, is a quick, but extremely usable, guide to Web usability and design. The book took me less than a day to read (less than 3 hours), but has become, in my mind, a requirement for even beginners (like myself) of Web design. Since everyone who develops for the Web should have some idea of design and usability, this book should really be a mandatory requirement for said work.

In short, there's no reason not to read this book if you're developing for the Web (writing content, programming, etcetera), or working with a team that does so.

As an owner of two online businesses I found this book to clarify and outline what most owners and developers fail to understand...which is usability / navigation of their sites..this book nails it. A must read for anyone involved in managing of paying for a web site. JLW.

Others have said that Krug's book (2nd edition) is for those with little experience. That is exactly why I found it so useful. There are lots of concepts that are common sense, sure. But until they were pointed out I had not even considered them. His point about the usefulness of tabs was particularly useful to me. I am creating a site now and will incorporate them into my design.

My only complaint is with the binding. The book was so poorly produced that pages began to loosen and fall out before I was finished with the first reading. I am now looking for a big rubber band to hold everything together. I just hate it when that happens.

It's a good sign when a usability expert's book is highly usable, and so this one is-- a fast read, very scannable, makes substantive points quickly, then follows them up with illustrative examples and lots of nice graphs and pictures. I've seen a couple people here comment that this book is only for beginners, but given the state of MOST sites that I find on the web (yes, this includes e-commerce sites and big brand sites that OUGHT to be very usable), I'd say this book is for ALL LEVELS OF WEB DESIGNERS. Consider it your basic reference for features that every site ought to have in order to be usable and marketable. Also, its a handy source to show to your boss/client when they want to do something silly with their site design-- it's highly quotable and is written to appeal to a business audience.

Steve walks the talk with this beautifully laid out and wonderfully structured book about usability. This book is perfect for anyone who wants to understand how real people use the internet, indeed, how real people read just about anything. Steve provides lots of great examples you can use with clients who want a beautiful website design but have no idea that some of their choices will turn their customers off. This book is amusing and very easy to read - it's the best book on web usability I've found.

This is a very well-written, easy-to-read, info-packed book. The information is logically presented; the layout and design make it easy to find what you want. Well worth the money

Steve Krug's book is full of solid, easily understood advice on web usability. But even more than that, he covers a lot of ground, indirectly, on how to deal with clients (for web designers) and how to think about, plan, and execute a web project (for the rest of us). Add to that the clear layout and design of the book, the engaging writing and humor, and you have probably the best book on usability design on the market.

A good book for web design beginners who are just starting their studies or careers in the industry. Someone with a lot of UI design and usability experience won't probably get anything new out of this one (except some perspective I guess).

The book is covering only the basics and is very light on content. On the other hand once you've got those basic design principles you are ready to go. The book is also very fast and fun to read and the author definitely has his own humorous style of writing. I hope we'll see more web design books like this one in the future. Books that are easy to digest between more serious reading.

Other related suggested reading could be the Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web Application Design by Robert Hoekman Jr. which is a bit more serious title but definitely good reading too.