LabKitty Recommends: Don't Make Me Think -- Steve Krug

The reason most academic websites are horrid even though they were made by smart people comes down to one issue: user experience. If you've ever attempted to navigate, say, GitHub or OpenNeuro, it's easy to tell usability was an afterthought. Why wouldn't it be? After all, if you're an expert in SVC or MRI or Bayesian diffeomorphic wavelets, how hard can designing an interface be? It's just a bunch of buttons, right?

Wrong.

Don't Make Me Think (now in its 3rd edition) is a classic on Web usability. In it, UX guru Steve Krug tackles the causes of and cures for bad design. The unifying theme is the book's title, but Krug breaks this down into easily digestible chunks: homepage etiquette, navigation consistency, tips for clear page layout, helpful versus unhelpful text, search box dos and don'ts, accessibility, and -- most important of all -- how to test the usability of your site. Examples are scattered throughout, with bad before and better after screenshots demonstrating how the book's ideas are put into practice. His focus here is commercial websites, but Krug's advice is pertinent for any application.

The book's style is breezy and clocks in at around 200 pages, making it an easy weekend read. So for the love of Cats, if you're planning on turning something loose on the general public -- especially something the rest of us will be forced to use -- please please please read Krug's book first. You no longer have any excuse not to.

PS: Krug's guidelines also apply to academic software (looking at you, Connectome Workbench).

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