Usability Principles

From Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug I summarized some usability principles. Based on these I will do some practice of reviewing Website usability.

1. "Don't make me think" is the first law of usability.

Make everything self-evidence.

2. Users may have these questions:

• Where am I?
• Where should I begin?
• Where did they put___?
• What are the most important thing on this page?
• Why did they call it that?

3. There are five important things you can do to make sure they see-and understand- as much of your site as possiple:

• Create a clear visual hierarchy on each page.
• Take advantage of comventions.
• Break pages up into clearly defined areas.
• Make it obvious what's clickable.
• Minimize noise.

The more important something is, the more prominent it is. Things that are related logically are also related visually. Things are "nested" visually to show what's part of what.

4. It doesn't matter how many times I have to click, as long as each click is mindless, unambiguous choice.

5. Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what's left. Omit needless words.

• Happy talk must die.
• Instructions must die.

6. The trouble with pulldowns. Pulldowns save space, but they have problems:

• You have to seek them out.

Hard to get the content, when scan the page.

• They're hard to scan/control.
  

If the designers use the standard HTML pulldown menu, they have no control over the font, spacing, or formatting of the list to make them more readable, and there's no really good way to divide the list into groups.

• They're twitchy. Somehow the fact that the list comes and goes quickly makes it harder to read.

Pulldowns are most effective for alphabetized lists of items with known names.