Steve Krug’s Laws of Usability

After a lot digging around, I found out a very good book on design. Which pretty much sum two rules that can be applied to anything.

When designing for something, I like a lot when the design flows through, you see lines, and you know the outcome already, and it pleases you (in some distorted way). Well apparently it is because you are familiar with it, some other thing already applied it but colors and visuals may be different but the underlying concept is the same.

Take the “golden ratio” design; Humans nature always try to reduce everything to patterns, the golden ratio is one attempt, and because of this, many designs today follow it, which makes it common, and at the same time you get familiar and comfortable, because it has the same underlying concept (golden ratio design). But I didn’t come to this conclusion myself (sad isn’t it) a book opened my eyes to it. In this book it mentions 2 basic rules of web usability but I rephrased them to apply to anything:

  • “Don’t make me think.”
  • “It doesn’t matter how many times I have to do something, as long as each action is a mindless, unambiguous choice.”

I never thought about this deeply, and I would discard my current designs of webpages based solely on these first two rules; Per example to achieve the first law compliance, familiarity beats anything even consistency, as consistency is similarity, and similarity brings you the “Don’t think” approach, then here is your first law compliant design. As for the second, the only way you can achieve it is do hallway usability tests.

I highly recommend the book (Don’t Make me Think), have a look at it, it is a very small one, not a bible that will consume space on your shelf; According to the author( I am very bad at names) it is meant to be read in a single flight. Anyways, here is the link for the book in good reads, in case you want more details.

el_avena off…