Don't make me think - Summary

Chapter 1 - Don't make me think!

• Nothing important should be further away than two clicks.
• Speak the language of your user.
• Be consistent.
• Your website should be clearly understandable. Don't let me think.
• Name your stuff clear and obvious.
• Let your different site components look like what they actually represent. Buttons should look like buttons...
• Don't let me think about how I want to search something. Just let me search it. It works for other people. Why not you?
• But you can sadly not make everything well understandable.

Chapter 2 - How we really use the Web

• User scan website to find what they need.
• User don't always make the optimal decision. They have to guess and are under "pressure". That doesn't make it better...
• User don't really understand how something works. They muddle through, just because it is not important to them or they want to stay with pre-existing stuff.
• If users "understand" something they can have a better time.

Chapter 3 - Billboard Design 101

• Create a clear visual hierarchy. Things that are more important should be bigger for example.
• Conventions are your friend since they pre-determine a lot of things. As a developer you profit from them by using them to create clear UIs. And you don't have to reinvent yourself.
• Divide your webpage in different clear-cut sections.
• Make it obvious what you can click and what not... Whether it is by link-design or symbols like arrows.
• Visual noice (i.e useless background effects) should be avoided since they don't contribute anything to better understanding.

Chapter 4 - Animal, Vegetable or miniral?

• Make it clear what is actually meant as a option when you have a selector.

Chapter 5 - Omit needless words

• Don't write anything useless.
• Don't have too much textual noice. The more important stuff should be placed more prominently. This results in shorter reading/scanning/understanding times.
• "Happy Talk" is unless promotional sh.t that no one needs.
• Useless and too long instructions are bad.

Chapter 6 - Street Signs and Breadcrumbs

• People won't use your website if they can't use it.
• Most of the times users search something on your site.
• Users look around and leave if they don't find their desired results. But there's no "physical looking around". That gives it no real scale which is why navigation is harder.
• But good navigation is even more important since it gives the user some "control".
• Global navigation should be available at every moment. But it shouldn't change drastically.
• Home pages and forms don't need navigation elements.
• Site Logos/IDs as navigation elements are pretty useful.
• Searching is useful if the site is not super small.
• Multi-Level Navigation is pretty hard. So test these kinds of pages well, especially their different navigation elements.
• Some "You are here" symbol is very useful. You can do that well as a breadcrumb.
• Tabs are also a good self-explainatory way. But don't make your tab dividers only color coded.

Trunk Test:

• What site is this? (Site ID/Icon)
• What page am I on? (Page Name)
• What are the major sections of the site? (Sections)
• What are my options at this level? (Local Navigation)
• Where am I in the scheme of things? ("You are here...")

Take a random page, go a bit further away in a physical way so you don't see the site as detailed. And then answer those questions from the Trunk Test as quickly as possible.

Chapter 7 - The first step in recovery is admitting that the Home Page is beyond your control

• A homepage must go a lot of things right and it most do all of those things very very clearly.

A homepage must by able to answer those questions very very quickly.

• What is this?
• What do I have here?
• What can I do here?
• Why should I be here and not somewhere else?

• You can get a message across with different methods. A tag line. A "Welcome" blurb with a short description. Don't use too much space but also not too little.
• The tagline should be pretty good. Clear. Informative and not vague.
• Where do I begin reading a website? At the navigation portion? (It can be customized to yourself...)
• Pulldown selections are bad since you don't need them necessarily.
• Don't be greedy with your content and force everything in. Less is more.

Chapter 8 - The farmer and the Cowman should be friends

• "Religious Debates" about different things and who likes what better are very bad and waste a lot of time.
• Developers are web users as well and thus have a lot of (strong) opinions about a "perfect" website. This can lead to clashes.
• There is no "average user" and there are no "real answers" to the question of what users like...
• The solution is to just try everything out. See what's better. And don't discuss too long.

Chapter 9 - Usability Testing on 10 cents a day

• Usability Testing is often done way too late.
• Focus Groups react to different ideas/designs. But they aren't good usability testing. You don't learn anything about what needs to be changed and improved.
• Good websites need (usability) testing.
• Testing with one single user well is 100% better than not testing at all, since you still gather data.
• Testing with a single user early is way better than testing with 50 users late. You can eliminate mistakes way earlier.
• Test user recruitment is important since you can test with a certain group in min.
• Testing is an interative process.
• Live audience reactions are the rest feedback you can get. They are honest and reflect the first instinct.
• You don't need a big research lab to do good Usability Testing. A few people. A camcorder and a computer is enough. A little budget is more than enough.
• 3-4 users per test round.
• It's never early enough to do testing.
• You can get the best results if you let your users decide what they want to do.
• Analyse your results immediately.
• As long as a user got back on track, everything is fine. Ignore it.
• Don't always add new stuff. Sometimes the solution is to remove something.
• You have so solve problems so it doesn't destroy anything else.
• You can do this type of usability testing just one morning per month.

Chapter 10 - Usability as common curtesy

• Is your site behaving like a human being in every situation?
• Make it so the goodwill of the user doesn't get used up with missing or incomplete information. But you can also fill it back up by giving the user their desired info in a clear way where they know you did the work.

Chapter 11 - Accessibility, CSS and you

• Accessibility is the right thing to do even though most people don't have any disabilities. Even though it's more work...
• You can always do an elegant solution where the website doesn't get broken AND gets accessible.
• Validators are pretty neat to show you super obvious things. But you have to do more...

What you can do...

• Fixing usability problems that concern everyone!
• Read articles about this topic and talk to people with disabilities.
• Read books about accessibilities.
• Use CSS correctly.
• Implement "easy fixes". (Alternative text, little JavaScript, more Client-Side stuff, Usability via keyboard usage...)