Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition

Five years and more than 100,000 copies after it was first published, it’s hard to imagine anyone working in Web design who hasn’t read Steve Krug’s “instant classic” on Web usability, but people are still discovering it every day.  In this second edition, Steve adds three new chapters in the same style as the original: wry and entertaining, yet loaded with insights and practical advice for novice and veteran alike.  Don’t be surprised if it completely changes the way you think about Web design. With these three new chapters:

• Usability as common courtesy — Why people really leave Web sites
• Web Accessibility, CSS, and you — Making sites usable and accessible
• Help! My boss wants me to ______. — Surviving executive design whims

“I thought usability was the enemy of design until I read the first edition of this book.  Don’t Make Me Think! showed me how to put myself in the position of the person who uses my site.  After reading it over a couple of hours and putting its ideas to work for the past five years, I can say it has done more to improve my abilities as a Web designer than any other book.

In this second edition, Steve Krug adds essential ammunition for those whose bosses, clients, stakeholders, and marketing managers insist on doing the wrong thing.  If you design, write, program, own, or manage Web sites, you must read this book.”  — Jeffrey Zeldman, author of Designing with Web Standards

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1 Don’t make me think!: Krug’s First Law of Usability
CHAPTER 2 How we really use the Web: Scanning, satisficing, and muddling through
CHAPTER 3 Billboard Design 101: Designing pages for scanning, not reading
CHAPTER 4 Animal, vegetable, or mineral?: Why users like mindless choices
CHAPTER 5 Omit words: The art of not writing for the Web
CHAPTER 6 Street signs and Breadcrumbs: Designing navigation
CHAPTER 7 The first step in recovery is admitting that the Home page is beyond your control: Designing the Home page
CHAPTER 8 “The Farmer and the Cowman Should Be Friends”: Why most Web design team arguments about usability are a waste of time, and how to avoid them
CHAPTER 9 Usability testing on 10 cents a day: Why user testing—done simply enough—is the cure for all your site’s ills
CHAPTER 10 Usability as common courtesy: Why your Web site should be a mensch
CHAPTER 11 Accessibility, Cascading Style Sheets, and you: Just when you think you’re done, a cat floats by with buttered toast strapped to its back
CHAPTER 12 Help! My boss wants me to ________.: When bad design decisions happen to good people