Hi folks!
It’s been a little bit longer between posts than usual – woops! Life got a bit busy. Anyways, I’m back. To make it up to you, I’ll have not one, but two chapters to cover for this week.
So without further ado, here we go.
Chapter 4
Chapter 4 is entitled Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral? Why users like mindless choices. The introduction to this chapter outlines the argument that web designers and usability professionals have been having for years. The argument goes like this: how many times can designers expect users to click to get to their destination on a site without getting frustrated?
Krug argues that while having a specific metric for this type behavior seems helpful, it really doesn’t matter. As long as the clicks are mindless, the user won’t care about how many it takes. They just want to find the necessary information without having to think too hard.
He summarizes it nicely by saying “three mindless, unambiguous clicks equal one click that requires thought.”
Krug then moves on to discuss several examples or poorly designed websites. Examples where the user has to really think about where the click is going to take them. As a designer, it should always be your goal to eliminate that confusion and hesitation.
With that being said, Krug acknowledges that it isn’t always so cut and dry. So in those situations, it is okay to provide some guidance. He says that guidance works best when it’s
- Brief: The smallest amount of information what will help you
- Timely: Placed so you encounter it exactly when you need it
- Unavoidable: Formatted in a way that ensure that you’ll notice it
While guidance is helpful, it is always best if you can make a site so user-friendly that it isn’t necessary. Making each and every click mindless is the best thing you can do to make a great site.
Chapter 5
Chapter 5 is entitled Omit needless words: The art of not writing for the web. I’ll fully admit before diving into this chapter that I have never been one for concise writing. I fully subscribe to the idea, but I’ve not always been the greatest at executing it. So I was excited that there is an entire chapter dedicated to it.
In the beginning of the chapter, Krug references E.B. White’s seventeenth rule in The Elements of Style:
“17. Omit needless words.
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.”
Most websites have words that are taking up space – they don’t serve a purpose. If they don’t serve a purpose, they are ultimately making the page seem more daunting to the reader than necessary.
Krug references his third law again. “Get rid of half the words on each page. Then get rid of half of what’s left.”
He argues that while the third law sounds excessive, it’s because it’s meant to. Removing half of the words is realistic because you can do that and still retain the value. Krug outlines that there are several beneficial effects to removing half the words. They are as follows:
- It reduces the noise level of the page.
- It makes the useful content more prominent.
- It makes the pages shorter, allowing users to see more of each page at a glance without scrolling.
He then follows up that while being concise should be the goal most of the time, there are some exceptions. It all depends on the subject matter.
We then move on to the idea of “happy talk” i.e the small talk within paragraphs. In a web format, there is no reason for fluffy sentences. So when you’re writing and you catch yourself writing a long intro, ask yourself “is this really necessary?” In Krug’s mind, odds are it isn’t.
In this chapter, he has a section devoted to instructions. He outlines that nobody reads them until they absolutely need to. As a technical writer, I cringe a bit at this statement. I also recognize the hard truth in it.
Krugs says the objective when it comes to instructions is to eliminate the need for them at all. Whatever you are designing should be designed so well that instructions shouldn’t be necessary. However, if you do need instructions, make them as concise as possible.
Wrapping Up
These two chapters were both pretty short and jumped around a bit. So I tried to capture the main ideas throughout both of them. I really like the idea of creating a design that is so intuitive that no instructions or guidance is required. The world would greatly benefit if more websites (and even software tools) operated with this mindset.
Anyways, I’ll catch ya later for the next chapter. Apparently we’re in for a long one.
Monica Dailey 