Don't Make Me Think!

Don’t Make Me Think Review

            A book like Don’t Make Me Think, is the type of book you do not know you need until you read it. To be completely honest after reading the summary for Steve Krug’s, Don’t Make Me Think, I felt as if reading the book would add little to no value to my life or work. I assumed the book would be filled with a bunch of facts and tips that I “already” knew, but my experience was the complete opposite. Reading this book taught me an exceptional amount when it came down to making my website user friendly. Upon the ending of this book I realized I had learned everything I didn’t know I needed to know.  At this point in my college career, I cannot decide between being a reporter or working in digital media, but Don’t Make Me Think somehow automatically made me so much better in each field. Every little tip and trick in this book gave me the tools needed to be the journalist I have always aspired to be.

While reading Steve Krug’s, Don’t Make Me Think there were a few tips in particular on having an easy-to-use website that stuck out to me. For example, in chapter five, I learned about the importance of getting rid of needless words. While getting rid of “needless words” might sound obvious, it was not until I went and looked at my own website, where I quickly realized I had an excessive amount of needless words. In the book Krug says, “Happy talk is like small talk—content-free, basically just a way to be sociable. But most Web users don’t have time for small talk; they want to get right to the point. You can—and should—eliminate as much happy talk as possible” (Krug 50). After reading this excerpt I realized a lot of what was on my website was less of me and my content and more of me trying to tell people why they should stay and watch my content. I always thought keeping your writing brief and straight to the point only applied while writing research papers or while on twitter, but this chapter showed me its importance even on websites.

A few other tips from Don’t Make Me Think that I found to be useful was the chapter on Designing Navigation. This chapter taught me the importance of making any website as rudimentary as possible. So, even if your audience is in their mid 40’s they should not have to think twice about clicking on a tab while, for example, trying to find your contact information. This chapter was another chapter that seemed evident at first, but quickly became a reference to making my own personal website better. Lastly, actually testing a website on how user-friendly it is, is another tip from this book that I found to be very helpful in creating and up keeping a successful website.

I truly did enjoy reading Don’t Make Me Think. The short length of this book made for an enjoyable, but straight to the point read. My new-found knowledge from this book will have my personal website and blog off to great starts!