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...
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.
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
Don't Make Me Think along with Luke Wroblewski's Web Form Design are two of my favourite books on the subject of understanding how people actually use Web sites. I've read plenty of dry accounts of usability that seem so far removed from what I experience when I observe real, living, breathing people struggle to achieve something online. Don't Make Me Think is the clearest, most honest account of all the stuff you need to know without any padding that you don't. It lives up to its title, in a good way.
This book should be read for its style as much as its content. Krug creates vivid analogies, shows simple techniques and barks snappy slogans. It's a performance of a book, and it's had a big influence.
I thought I would add to this my own personal list of top UX books that have helped me along in my career as well as in recent days. These books I have promoted in several of my presentations as well as to any colleagues who ask for such resources. So here is my list of top UX Books:
If you create digital products, you have a responsibility to make them easy to use. It’s mostly common sense; it’s just not common practice! These books are what I consider the must-haves for any user experience designer. They'll teach you how to design products that are useful, usable and desirable.
Are you working with someone who just doesn't "get it"? Here's a short list of books, any of which can really drive home why design is an important part of creating anything.
The field of user experience design is so encompassing that there is a near infinite amount of knowledge to be drawn from other domains. Whilst UX as a discipline is very young it's founded on principles and research from psychology, design and social sciences that give it a definite foot up when it comes to feeling confident in the work we do.
Over the years my UX-related bookshelf turned into a bookcase (or two.) This list is as much about the books that make you think and take a walk as the books that get you to shout "Eureka!" and fix a more immediate problem.
Books on the tools and processes that have taught me the most about not only how to create interface designs, but how to think about design and the techniques that make that thinking concrete and communicable.
