USABILITY PRINCIPLES

Krug's first law of usability, "Don't make me think" is a powerful concept. When users visit a page, it is important that the site should leave a positive impact that satisfies them on a long term basis. A page should be self-evident, obvious and self-explanatory (Krug, p18). The user should be able to know what the website is about without having to spend extra effort thinking about it. By minimally browsing throught the site, or "scanning the site", the user should be able to know what the site is about.

In order to apply this concept and increase usability of their sites, interface designers and instructional designers must first know who their users (background and learning styles) are and what kind of task are the users looking for (Galitz, 2002). This can be achieved by conducting a user and task analysis at the start of the project (Wikipedia, 2004). Once data about the users is collected, designers can proceed with creating sites that can meet goals. At the same time, designers must be able to keep the site simple and consisitent.

Examples include (1) a clear navigation system, (2) avoid visual clutter with meaningless graphics, (3) readable text, (4) functional visual buttons or icons that make sense, and (5) avoid distractions such as constant animated graphics, or text and bright color shcemes  (Galitz). As Krug states, designers must try to design a site that removes all question marks or ambiguity.

Although we'll be looking at and talking about Web pages the concepts, ideas, and principles are also applicable to designing other types of interfaces. Krug's first law of usuability is -- Don't Make Me Think! -- which means that a Web page or a CD-ROM user interface should be --

• Self-evident
• Obvious
• Self-explanatory

The user should be able to "get it" (what is is and how to use it) without having to expend any effort thinking about it. This means self-evident enough that someone who has no interest in the subject of the site and is minimally browser literate can look at your site's home page and know what the site is about.

Krug explains "not thinking" and "thinking" when you are looking at a page like this --

• "Not Thinking" means that if there were balloons over my head saying what I was thinking while I was looking at a site the balloons would say things like . . .
  • Okay, here's the _________.
  • And that's a ________.
  • And there's the thing I want.
• "Thinking" balloons would include things like . . .
  • . . . pretty busy, where should I start?
  • Why did they call it that? I wonder if its really ______.
  • Can I click on that?
  • Where's the navigations links?

Why did they (the designer/developer) put that there? The whole idea when creating a site is to "get rid of the questions marks" for the user. Some of the things that makes us stop and think, and often think unnecessarily are:

• cute and/or clever names
• unfamiliar technical names
• company-specific names
• marketing induced names.

Think of "making us think" options on a continuum with the end points being "obvious to all" and "really obscure" or said another way "obvious" and "requires thought". These continuums are shown below.

or

Navigation links can also cause us to stop and think if they are not "obviously" clickable. If we draw this continuum it would look like this --

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