The book “Don’t Make Me Think,” by Steve Krug goes into details about the importance of usability of a website. The title of the book answers the many questions people have when trying to figure out the best way to set up a website. When viewers visit a website the purpose and content of the site should be clear from the start. Krug feels a web page should be “self-evident. Obvious. Self-Explanatory” (1). Krug considers the title of his work to be the first law of usability (1). Usability of all websites is very important. Web pages in one way or another is set up to educate viewers while getting out its company’s message. Viewers should in no way be confused by the content, Krug feels a designers “job is to get rid of the question marks” (3). While searching through sites viewers should only stop at things that are important, not things that make them think harder about the sites purpose or worse off things that confuse them.
I find Krug’s work to be very beneficial for readers and most importantly web designers. He lays everything out for his readers. He work is short, simple and to the point. What make his work better are the images that he gives to help assist his thoughts. Working at a marketing firm, designing website, I find a lot of Krug’s views to be very helpful. I had to figure out the layout of pages making sure it properly represented the site. Every site must have a target audience and an obvious function. Clients would tell us their intentions for the site and the many different departments helped build out the client’s vision. Consistency and accuracy is very important when concerning usability. Everything within a site should flow and serve a purpose, they must also be user-friendly.
The reading on the case study “Usability Testing of an Academic Library Web Site” by Brenda Battleson, Austin Booth, and Jane Weintrop gave me an outlook on something I had never thought about before. I found this reading to be very interesting when they talk about the tons of information on academic library site. The work states, “Although intended to ease the process of information access, the staggering amount of information available via these sites can produce a kind of “information overload” that can bewilder, confuse, and even discourage users” (1). There are certain things we take for granted. The way in which these academic sites are set up is critical. The work goes on to state there is a “fundamental need for usability in library websites and usability testing…” (1). Everything has to be in the right place, properly linked while being accurate and clear for its viewers.
The relationship between Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is very important as well. The work talks about how sites should provide task support which enables users to achieve their goals or the company’s goals or needs while on the site. It should first and foremost be usable or user-friendly as I stated earlier which users can work “easily, efficiently and with few errors” (1). And lastly, user-centered design should have some type of clear interface design. Everything should be clear, concise and to the point making it easy for viewers to navigate through with full understanding of the site.
