Dontmake Me Think Revisited Book Reviews

People always do a lot of stuff on the Web such as for buying, moving (traveling), connecting (for social communication, or to nature), reading ( reading maybe one of the human initiative activity ha?), and for entertainment.

Usability is about people and how they understand and use things, not about technology. And while technology often changes quickly, people change very slowly.

What was difficult for users twenty years ago continues to be difficult today.

Don't Make Me Think, Revisited ( PDFDrive )

A live presentation allows people to ask me questions and voice their concerns — something a written report does not do.

Visual designers and developers now often find themselves doing things like interaction design (deciding what happens next when the user clicks, taps, or swipes) and information architecture (figuring out how everything should be organized).

If it’s short, it’s more likely to actually be used.

There is a good usability principle right there, If something requires a large investment of time — or looks like it will — it’s less likely to be used.

You don’t need to know everything.

The only thing I’m sure of it is that (a) most of the predictions I hear are almost certainly wrong, and (b) the things that will turn out to be important will come as a surprise, even though in hindsight they’ll seem perfectly obvious.

It’s like golf: a handful of ways ti get the ball in the hole, a million ways not to. Anyone who gets it even half right has my admiration.

You’ll find a lot of different definitions of usability, often breaking it down into attributes like:

Useful : Dose it do something people ==need== done ?

Learnable : Can people figure out ==how== to use it ?

Memorable: Do they have to ==relearn== it each time they use it ?

Effective: Dose it ==get the job done==?

Efficient: Dose it do it with a reasonable amount of ==time and effort==?

Desirable: Do people ==want== it?

Delightful: Is using it enjoyable, or even ==fun==?

Nothing important should ever be more than two clicks away

Speak the user’s language

Be consistent

Don’t make me thing!

A webpage should be self-evident. Obvious. Self-explanatory.

It should be able to “get it” — what it is and how to use it — without expending any effort thinking about it.

All kind of things on a webpage can make us stop and think unnecessarily. Typical culprits are cute or clever names, marketing-included names, company-specific names, and unfamiliar technical names.

As a user, I should never have to devote a millisecond of thought to whether things are clickable — or not.

The point is that every question mark adds to our cognitive workload, distracting our attention from the task at hand.

Users shouldn’t spend their time thinking about, like :

Where am I ?

Where should I begin?

Where did they put ___ ?

What are the most important things on this page?

Why did they call it that?

Is that an ad or part of the site?

Here’s the rule: if you can’t make something self-evident, you at least need to make it self-explanatory.

On the internet, the competition is always just one click away, so if you frustrate users they will head somewhere else.

Most people are going to spend far less time looking at the pages we design that we’d like to imagine.

Why are things always in the last place you look for them? Because you stop looking when you find them! — Children’s Riddle

The thing that has struck me most is the difference between how we think people use Web sites and how they actually use them.

If you want to design effective web pages, though, you have to learn to live with three facts about real world web use:

We don’t read pages, we scan them.

We don’t make optimal choices, we satisfice

We don’t figure out how things work, we muddle through

Instead, we scan ( or skim) them, looking for words or phrases that catch our eye.

Why do we scan?

We’re usually on a mission — They have to keep moving or they’ll die. We just don’t have time to read any more than necessary.

We know we don’t need to read everything.

We are good at it. — all our lives to find the parts that we are interested in, and we know that it works

We tend to focus on words and phrases that seem to match (a) the task at hand or (b) our current or ongoing personal interest. And of course , (c) the trigger words that are hardwires into our nervous systems, like “Free”, “Sale”, and “Sex”, and our own name.

In reality, though, most of the time, we don’t choose the best option — we choose the first reasonable option, a strategy known as satisficing.

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.

Source of Power: How people make decisions

People do not compare options and choose the best one.

Wh don’t web users look for the best choice?

We are usually in a hurry. — optimizing is hard, and it takes a long time. Satisficing is more efficient.

There’s not much of a penalty for guessing wrong. — back is the most used button in web browsers.

Weighing options may not improve our chances. — going with your first guess and using the back button if it dose not work out.

Guessing is more fun. — the pleasant possibility of running into something surprising and good.

We don’t figure our how things work, we muddle through. 我们不知道事情如何运作。我们摸索

People use things all the time without understanding how they work, or with completely wrong-headed ideas about how they work.

Many people use the web extensively without knowing that they are using a browser. What they know is you type something a a box and stuff appears/

Usually a box with the word, “google” next to it, A lot of people think google is the internet.

For most of us, it dose not matter to us whether we understand how thing work, as long as we can use them. It is not for lack of intelligence, but for lack of caring. It not just not important to us.

If we find something that works, we stick to it.

Once we find something that works, no matter how badly, we tend not to look for a better way. We’ll use a way if we stumble across one, but we seldom look for one.

Designing for scanning, not reading.

What you want them to know as possible :

Take advantage of conventions

Create effective visual hierarchies

Break pages up into clearly defined creas

Make it obvious what’s clickable

Eliminate distractions

Format content to support scanning

In the past twenty years, many conventions for web pages have evolved.

Where things will be located on a page —

Logo : top left corner

Primary navigation : across the top or down the left side

How things work —

Similar forms

Method of payment

Shipping address

How thing look — many elements have a standarized appearance

They feel ( not incorrectly) that they have’ve been hired to do something new and different, not the same old thing.

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

If you’re not going to use an existing web convention, you need to be sure that what you are replacing it with either (a) is so clear and self-explanatory that there’s no learning curve — so it is as good as the convention, or (b) adds so much value that it’s worth a small learning curve.

Innovate when you know you have a better idea, but take advantages of conventions when you don’t

Instead of text links or menus, you use the photo to navigate the site. (About Harlem.org)

You can also browse the musicians by name, instrument, or jazz style.

Give user (client) different ways to reach there goal — Azat

Accurately portray the relationships between the things on the page:

Which things are most important

Which things are similar

Which things are part of other things

Each page should have a clear visual hierarchy

The more important something is, the more prominent it is. — the most important things are either :

larger

bolder

In a distinctive color

Set off by more white space

Nearer the top of the page

Or some combination of the above

Things are related logically are related visually.

Group them together under a heading,

Displaying with same visual style

Putting them a clearly defined area

Things are “nested” visually to show that’s the part of what

The story is the most important because it has the biggest headline and a prominent position on the page.

A good visual hierarchy saves us work by preprocessing the page for us, organizing and prioritizing it’s contents in a way that we can grasp almost instantly.

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.

Make it obvious what’s clickable.

Keep the noise down to a dull roar

The truth is, everything can’t be important.

Importance of using grids to align the elements on a page.

Format text to support scanning — the way your text is formatted can do a lot to make it easier for them.

To make your pages scan friendly :

Use plenty of headings

More headings and more time to write them

Visual distinction :

Larger

More space

Do not let your headings float, make sure they are closer to the section they introduced than to the section they follow

Keep paragraphs short

Reading online is different, even single sentence paragraphs are fine.

Use bulleted lists

Almost everything that can be a bulleted list probably should be

Highlight key terms

Three mindless, unambiguous clicks equal one click that requires thought.

Life is complicated, though, and some choices really aren’t simple.

You need to give me as much guidance as I need — but no more.

This guidance would best when it’s:

Brief : The ==smallest== amount of information that will help me .

==Timely==: Placed so I encounter it exactly when I need it (限时促销)

==Unavoidable==: Formatted in a way that ensures that I’ll notice it.

Omit needless words.

A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.