Don't Make Me Think, Revisited — Chapter-by-Chapter Outline

Author: Steve Krug First published: 2000, as Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability Edition covered: 3rd edition, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web (and Mobile) Usability, New Riders / Peachpit / Pearson, published December 2013 with 2014 copyright and imprint records, ISBN 9780321965516. This edition adds a mobile-usability chapter, updates examples, and extends the book's web-usability principles to web, mobile, and application interfaces. The verified structure contains a preface, an introduction, four named parts, thirteen numbered chapters, acknowledgments, and an index. This outline covers the thirteen numbered chapters; the preface, introduction, and part headings are folded into the edition note, central thesis, and overall argument. The chapter skeleton was cross-checked against Steve Krug's official table-of-contents PDF, Peachpit/Pearson's publisher page, the Pearson sample-pages PDF, Open Library, and an independent library catalog.

Central thesis

Don't Make Me Think, Revisited argues that usable digital products reduce the amount of interpretation people must do before they can act. A page, screen, link, form, navigation system, or home page should communicate what it is, what matters, what is clickable, where the user is, and what will happen next without requiring users to puzzle through the designer's intent.

Krug's practical claim is that teams routinely design for a careful, rational user who reads, compares, and understands the site hierarchy. Real users usually scan, choose the first plausible path, and muddle through just well enough to reach a goal. Good design works with that behavior. It uses conventions, hierarchy, concise writing, clear choices, navigation cues, and frequent usability testing to remove unnecessary question marks from the user's mind.

The book's broader claim is organizational. Usability is not a specialist ornament added late in a project; it is a way for teams to make better decisions together. Testing real people turns subjective arguments into observable evidence, while accessibility, mobile usability, and common courtesy keep the user's needs from being displaced by internal politics.

How can teams design sites and apps so users can recognize what to do without stopping to decipher the interface?

Chapter 1 — Don't make me think!

Central question

What is the simplest rule for making a web page or app screen usable at first encounter?

Main argument

Usability starts by eliminating needless questions. Krug's first law is the title of the chapter: the user should not have to stop and ask what something means, where to begin, whether something is clickable, why a category is named that way, or whether an element is content or advertising. The cost of each question may be small, but the questions accumulate into cognitive work that distracts from the user's goal.

Self-evident is better than explained. The ideal page is self-evident: users can glance at it and understand its purpose and use. When a page cannot be fully self-evident because the domain is complex or unfamiliar, it should at least be self-explanatory: the necessary clues, labels, and relationships are clear enough that understanding arrives quickly.

Obvious beats clever. The chapter's examples include cute labels for ordinary categories, company-specific names, technical terms, and links or buttons that do not look interactive. Krug's point is not that every design must be dull. It is that cleverness has a cost when it obscures what users came to do.

Key ideas

• Every ambiguous label, hidden affordance, and unclear starting point adds cognitive load.
• Users should not have to decide whether a visible element is clickable or important.
• A self-evident page communicates purpose, available actions, and priority through layout and wording.
• A self-explanatory page can still work when novelty or complexity prevents instant recognition.
• Teams often underestimate how much insider vocabulary and internal politics leak into interfaces.

Key takeaway

Usability begins when the interface answers obvious questions before the user has to ask them.

Chapter 2 — How we really use the Web

Central question

How do people actually behave on web pages, and what does that imply for design?

Main argument

Users scan rather than read. Designers may imagine users absorbing pages carefully, but most people look for words, shapes, links, and visual cues that match their current task. They move quickly because they are often in a hurry, because much of every page is irrelevant to them, and because scanning usually works well enough.

Users satisfice rather than optimize. People often choose the first reasonable path instead of comparing all possible options. This is not irrational in context: clicking is usually cheap, the back button exists, and the best choice may be impossible to identify from the current page.

Users muddle through. Many people use sites, browsers, apps, and devices without forming accurate conceptual models of how they work. If a pattern gets them to the result they need, they repeat it. Design should therefore support partial understanding, not demand full understanding.

Key ideas

• Pages must be designed for glancing and scanning, not only for linear reading.
• The first plausible option often wins, so labels and hierarchy carry real behavioral weight.
• People can succeed with incomplete or even mistaken mental models if the interface is forgiving.
• Designers should not depend on users noticing every instruction or reading every paragraph.
• The correct response to real user behavior is clearer design, not frustration with users.

Key takeaway

Effective interfaces are built for scanners, satisficers, and muddlers rather than for ideal readers.

Chapter 3 — Billboard Design 101

Central question

How should pages be composed so users can grasp them while scanning?

Main argument

A page should read like a fast billboard. Users often encounter a page briefly while moving toward a task. The page must therefore communicate structure before detail. Krug focuses on visual hierarchy, conventions, page areas, obvious clickability, reduced noise, and scan-friendly text.

Visual hierarchy does much of the work. More important things should look more important; related things should look related; nested things should look nested. A user should be able to infer the page's organization before reading individual sentences.

Conventions are a usability asset. Logos, search boxes, shopping carts, page names, section navigation, and link styles carry learned meaning. Innovation is useful when it improves clarity, but needless departure from conventions makes users relearn what they already knew.

Noise blocks recognition. Busy pages force users to sort through competing claims. Clear page areas, short paragraphs, headings, bullets, and restrained emphasis help users locate the part of the page that matters to them.

Key ideas

• Visual hierarchy pre-processes the page for the user.
• Familiar conventions reduce the amount of learning required.
• Clearly separated page areas help people ignore what is irrelevant.
• Clickable elements should look clickable without inspection.
• Short, structured writing supports scanning better than dense prose.

Key takeaway

Design for quick recognition: hierarchy, convention, grouping, and concise text let users find meaning before they read closely.

Chapter 4 — Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral?

Central question

What makes an interaction choice easy enough that users stay confident?

Main argument

The number of clicks is the wrong first metric. Krug's second law says that users tolerate multiple clicks when each choice is clear, unambiguous, and moving them toward the goal. A shallow path full of confusing labels can be worse than a slightly deeper path where every step has strong information scent.

Information scent guides movement. Links, buttons, categories, and menu items should signal where they lead. When labels are vague, organization is company-centered, or choices depend on distinctions the user does not understand, confidence drops.

Some choices need assistance. Forms, subscription flows, product selectors, and account questions sometimes require distinctions that are not inherently obvious. In those cases, help should be brief, timely, and unavoidable enough to be noticed at the moment of need.

Key ideas

• Users care less about click count than about confidence at each click.
• Clear link labels create information scent that tells users they are on the right path.
• Ambiguous top-level categories make users doubt both the current choice and the next page.
• Inline guidance works best when it appears exactly where the decision is made.
• A mindless choice is not a childish choice; it is a choice whose meaning is evident.

Key takeaway

Each interaction should preserve the user's confidence by making the next choice obvious enough to require little deliberation.

Chapter 5 — Omit needless words

Central question

How does cutting text improve usability rather than merely shorten pages?

Main argument

Unnecessary words are interface noise. Krug's third law adapts a classic writing principle to web pages: remove the words that do not help users understand or act. The goal is not literary minimalism. It is to make useful content more visible and reduce the effort of finding it.

Happy talk wastes attention. Introductory paragraphs that welcome users, praise the organization, or announce that content is useful often consume prime space without answering a real question. Users usually skip them, but they still add clutter.

Instructions are a design smell when overused. If a control, form, or page requires long instructions, the design may not be self-explanatory enough. Some instructions are necessary, but they should be as short as possible and placed where they are needed.

Key ideas

• Cutting text lowers visual noise and raises the prominence of useful content.
• Web writing should support action, scanning, and decision-making.
• Promotional filler often serves internal reassurance rather than user need.
• Long instructions frequently indicate that the interface itself needs improvement.
• Concision is a usability technique, not only an editorial preference.

Key takeaway

Every word on a page should earn its place by helping users understand, decide, or act.

Chapter 6 — Street signs and Breadcrumbs

Central question

How should navigation compensate for the fact that the web lacks physical location cues?

Main argument

Web navigation borrows from physical wayfinding but has harder constraints. In a store, people use signs, aisles, departments, memory of movement, and sometimes staff. On a web site, users often lack scale, direction, and a stable sense of location. They may land deep inside the site from search and need orientation immediately.

Navigation tells users where they are and what the site contains. Persistent navigation, a clear site ID, sections, utilities, search, page names, local navigation, "you are here" indicators, and breadcrumbs work together to make the site legible. They are not mere chrome around content; they teach the site structure.

The trunk test checks whether navigation works. Krug asks designers to imagine being dropped into any page and quickly identifying the site, page name, major sections, local options, current location, and search. If those answers are hard to find, the navigation is not doing its job.

Key ideas

• Users need orientation because web pages do not naturally provide spatial memory.
• Persistent navigation creates stability as users move through a site.
• Site ID, page name, sections, utilities, search, and breadcrumbs each answer a different wayfinding question.
• Breadcrumbs and "you are here" cues help users understand both location and hierarchy.
• Navigation is part of the product's explanation of itself.

Key takeaway

Good navigation makes a site feel locatable: users can tell where they are, what is available, and how to move next.

Chapter 7 — The Big Bang Theory of Web Design

Central question

What must a home page communicate before users decide whether to trust and use the site?

Main argument

The home page carries too many jobs. It must identify the site, explain its mission, expose the hierarchy, provide search, promote important content, show what is new or valuable, offer shortcuts, and support registration or sign-in. At the same time, it is contested territory because internal groups want visibility there.

First impressions frame everything else. The home page should quickly answer what the site is, what users can do there, what it contains, why it is worth using, and where to start. If users misunderstand the home page, they may misread the rest of the site.

Taglines and welcome blurbs should clarify, not decorate. A good tagline near the site ID communicates the site's purpose and differentiation. A short explanatory blurb may be useful when the concept is unfamiliar, but it should not become generic marketing copy.

Every page also has home-page work to do. Because many users arrive through search, ads, links, or shared URLs, interior pages must still orient users to the site and its structure.

Key ideas

• Home pages are difficult because they combine orientation, promotion, navigation, and internal politics.
• Users need immediate answers to identity, purpose, value, and starting-point questions.
• Search and shortcuts are core home-page functions, not secondary conveniences.
• Taglines work when they explain purpose and differentiation in plain language.
• Interior pages must orient users who never saw the home page.

Key takeaway

The home page should establish identity, purpose, hierarchy, and trust before competing claims fill the screen.

Chapter 8 — "The Farmer and the Cowman Should Be Friends"

Central question

Why do web teams argue endlessly about usability, and how can they escape those arguments?

Main argument

Many usability debates are really belief debates. Designers, developers, executives, marketers, and product owners all use the web and therefore bring personal preferences to design meetings. They also bring professional biases: visual designers may emphasize visual interest, developers may value features, business stakeholders may value promotion, and executives may overgeneralize from personal taste.

There is no average user who can settle the argument. Teams often talk as if one representative user exists and can be designed for in the abstract. Krug argues that users are varied, contexts differ, and many design questions have no universal answer outside a specific site, task, and audience.

Testing changes the kind of conversation. Watching people attempt real tasks turns arguments from "what I like" into "what users did, where they struggled, and what we can fix." Testing does not remove judgment, but it gives judgment better evidence.

Key ideas

• Usability arguments often repeat because they are based on preferences rather than observations.
• Professional roles shape what team members notice and value.
• The imagined average user is too vague to guide specific design decisions.
• There are few universal right answers once context and task vary.
• Usability testing lets teams replace stalemate with evidence from real behavior.

Key takeaway

Teams make better usability decisions when they stop debating imagined users and watch actual users.

Chapter 9 — Usability testing on 10 cents a day

Central question

How can teams do enough usability testing without treating it as expensive research theater?

Main argument

Testing works because teams know too much. After building a site for weeks, team members can no longer see it fresh. They know the vocabulary, intended paths, hidden assumptions, and internal constraints. A usability test restores the outsider's view by having someone attempt real tasks while observers watch.

Small tests beat delayed perfection. Krug argues for simple, frequent, low-cost testing: a few participants, realistic tasks, lightweight recording or screen sharing, observers from the team, and an immediate debrief. One test with one person is still more informative than no test, especially early enough that changes are possible.

Focus groups are different. A focus group gathers opinions and reactions; a usability test observes someone trying to use the thing. Both can be useful, but only the latter shows whether the interface supports action.

Fix the worst problems first. After a test session, the team should identify the most serious and most fixable problems, then make changes before the next round. The point is not a long report. The point is a repeated learning loop.

Key ideas

• Watching users reveals assumptions that insiders can no longer detect.
• Early testing prevents teams from discovering major problems after the design is expensive to change.
• Small, repeated tests are more practical than rare large studies for many projects.
• Recruiting perfectly matched participants is less important than testing often, especially for broad usability issues.
• Observers should debrief quickly and prioritize fixes by severity and feasibility.

Key takeaway

Usability testing should be ordinary, frequent, and actionable: watch people use the product, fix the biggest problems, and test again.

Chapter 10 — Mobile: It's not just a city in Alabama anymore

Edition note

This chapter is new in the third edition and is the clearest structural addition to the book's "Revisited" version.

Central question

How do Krug's usability principles change when the primary screen is mobile?

Main argument

The principles remain, but the constraints sharpen. Mobile screens have less space, touch input, no hover state, variable network conditions, and more fragmented contexts of use. These constraints make self-evidence, clear choices, and careful prioritization more important, not less.

Mobile first is a prioritization discipline. Starting with mobile can force teams to decide what matters most. But Krug warns against interpreting mobile as permission to remove things users still need. Users on phones may want the same information and functions as desktop users, only arranged and prioritized differently.

Affordance and performance matter more on small screens. Flat design, hidden gestures, tiny targets, and overloaded icons can make touch interfaces harder to understand. Slow pages and heavy assets are also usability failures because they interrupt the user's task.

Apps have to be learnable and memorable. Mobile apps compete for attention and may be used intermittently. Interfaces should be easy to resume after absence, not only attractive during first use.

Key ideas

• Mobile design intensifies the need to choose what belongs on the screen.
• Smaller screens punish clutter, vague labels, and hidden controls.
• Touch interfaces need visible affordances because hover-based discovery disappears.
• Performance is part of usability when users are mobile or on unstable networks.
• Mobile usability should be tested on real devices and in realistic contexts.

Key takeaway

Mobile does not replace Krug's rules; it makes the cost of violating them more visible.

Chapter 11 — Usability as common courtesy

Central question

How does usability affect the user's willingness to trust and continue using a site?

Main argument

Users arrive with a reservoir of goodwill. A site can drain that goodwill by hiding needed information, making obvious tasks difficult, asking for unnecessary personal data, punishing users for entering information in a reasonable format, placing marketing obstacles in the way, or appearing careless and untrustworthy.

Courtesy is practical design. A courteous site anticipates likely questions, makes common tasks visible, explains costs and policies before users feel trapped, provides genuinely useful FAQs, supports recovery from errors, and avoids needless hassle.

Goodwill can be replenished. Users forgive some friction when a site is transparent, helpful, and honest about its limitations. The chapter reframes usability as a relationship: the interface communicates whether the organization respects the user's time and situation.

Key ideas

• Usability problems are experienced as disregard, not merely inconvenience.
• Hiding support, prices, shipping costs, or policy details depletes trust.
• Asking for information the user does not understand or does not want to share creates suspicion.
• Helpful defaults, forgiving forms, good FAQs, and clear recovery paths replenish goodwill.
• Courtesy aligns business interest with user respect because trust affects return behavior.

Key takeaway

A usable site behaves like a considerate host: it respects the user's time, questions, privacy, and need to recover from mistakes.

Chapter 12 — Accessibility and you

Central question

Why should accessibility be treated as part of usability rather than a separate obligation?

Main argument

Accessibility is a usability requirement for people who are often excluded. Krug argues that a site cannot be called usable if people with disabilities cannot use it. Accessibility is not only a legal or technical checklist; it is part of whether the product serves people.

Teams resist accessibility for predictable reasons. Some assume it affects few users, threatens visual design, requires specialized expertise, or creates extra work late in the project. Krug's response is pragmatic: many accessibility improvements also improve general usability, and the moral case does not depend on whether every improvement benefits every user.

Start with concrete practices. The chapter points teams toward learning from users of assistive technology and making practical fixes: semantic structure, useful alt text, keyboard access, readable contrast, clear headings, usable forms, and templates or components that do not block accessibility from the start.

Key ideas

• Accessibility belongs inside usability because disabled users are users.
• Assistive-technology use reveals barriers that sighted mouse users may never notice.
• Broad usability problems often become larger barriers for people with disabilities.
• Semantic markup, headings, labels, contrast, keyboard access, and alt text are practical starting points.
• Accessibility is easier when considered early in templates and components.

Key takeaway

Accessibility is not an afterthought to usability; it is one of the ways usability becomes real for everyone.

Chapter 13 — Guide for the perplexed

Central question

How can someone make usability happen inside an organization that is not organized around it?

Main argument

The vocabulary changed, but the advocacy problem remains. Krug notes the shift from "usability" and "user-centered design" toward the broader language of user experience, with specialties such as interaction design, information architecture, interface design, content strategy, and research. The labels matter less than whether organizations observe users and improve what they build.

Small evidence beats abstract persuasion. The chapter's practical advice is to expose colleagues and decision-makers to usability tests. Watching a real person struggle with a real product can persuade more effectively than a lecture about principles. Competitive testing can also lower defensiveness by making usability visible before the team turns the lens on itself.

Advocacy requires empathy for coworkers too. Usability advocates should understand business pressures, speak in terms that matter to the organization, show quick wins, and avoid turning user advocacy into moral superiority.

Do not use usability to manipulate. The chapter closes with an ethical warning: knowledge of user behavior can be used to deceive as well as to help. Usability work should make products clearer and more humane, not more exploitative.

Key ideas

• UX roles and labels are less important than whether teams learn from users.
• Live observation is one of the strongest arguments for usability investment.
• Starting small can create evidence, allies, and momentum.
• Competitive tests can make usability issues visible without immediately blaming internal teams.
• Usability advocacy should connect user needs to organizational goals without becoming manipulative.

Key takeaway

The way to advance usability is to make user behavior visible, start with small tests, build allies, and keep the work ethically user-centered.

The book's overall argument

1. Chapter 1 (Don't make me think!) — The book establishes its governing rule: remove avoidable uncertainty from the user's mind.
2. Chapter 2 (How we really use the Web) — It grounds that rule in real behavior: people scan, satisfice, and muddle through.
3. Chapter 3 (Billboard Design 101) — It turns those behaviors into page-design principles for fast recognition.
4. Chapter 4 (Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral?) — It applies the same logic to interaction choices, arguing that confidence matters more than raw click count.
5. Chapter 5 (Omit needless words) — It shows that words are part of the interface and that excess text creates friction.
6. Chapter 6 (Street signs and Breadcrumbs) — It moves from pages to site structure, making navigation the user's substitute for physical wayfinding.
7. Chapter 7 (The Big Bang Theory of Web Design) — It applies the navigation and clarity principles to the home page, the site's most contested orientation point.
8. Chapter 8 ("The Farmer and the Cowman Should Be Friends") — It shifts from interface design to team decision-making, showing why taste arguments cannot settle usability.
9. Chapter 9 (Usability testing on 10 cents a day) — It proposes lightweight testing as the practical mechanism for replacing arguments with observed evidence.
10. Chapter 10 (Mobile: It's not just a city in Alabama anymore) — It extends the principles to mobile, where space, touch, performance, and context make clarity harder.
11. Chapter 11 (Usability as common courtesy) — It reframes usability as respect for the user's time, trust, and situation.
12. Chapter 12 (Accessibility and you) — It insists that usability must include people with disabilities rather than treating them as a separate edge case.
13. Chapter 13 (Guide for the perplexed) — It closes by explaining how to advocate for usability inside real organizations without losing the ethical purpose of the work.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: "Don't make me think" means every product must be simplistic.

Krug is not arguing against complexity where the task is complex. He is arguing against needless interpretation. Complex products can still have clear hierarchy, obvious controls, helpful navigation, and good feedback.

Misunderstanding: The goal is always fewer clicks.

The book explicitly pushes against a mechanical click-count rule. Fewer clicks help when paths are repeated or pages are slow, but the more general goal is clear, confident progress at each step.

Misunderstanding: Users should be trained to read more carefully.

Krug treats scanning and satisficing as normal human behavior, not as a defect to be corrected. Design should support the way people actually use interfaces.

Misunderstanding: Usability can be decided by the most experienced person in the room.

Experience matters, but the book argues that subjective debates need contact with real users. Testing provides evidence that team opinions cannot supply alone.

Misunderstanding: Usability testing requires a lab, a large sample, and a formal report.

Krug's method favors small, frequent, practical tests that lead directly to fixes. A modest test conducted early is often more useful than a polished study conducted too late.

Misunderstanding: Accessibility is a separate compliance layer.

The accessibility chapter treats disabled users as part of the real user population. Accessibility is therefore a core usability concern, even when it also has legal and standards dimensions.

Misunderstanding: Mobile usability is a different discipline with different laws.

The third edition argues that mobile raises new constraints, but it does not replace the core principles. Smaller screens and touch input make self-evidence, prioritization, and testing more important.

Misunderstanding: If usability techniques increase conversion, any use is acceptable.

The final chapter warns against using knowledge of user behavior to manipulate people. The book's version of usability is user advocacy, not dark-pattern optimization.

Central paradox / key insight

The book's central paradox is that people can accomplish serious tasks online while paying only partial attention, using incomplete understanding, and choosing merely plausible paths. Good usability does not require making users more careful. It requires making the interface easier to recognize under the conditions in which people actually use it.

The practical insight is that "common sense" is difficult inside teams because teams know too much. Once designers, developers, and stakeholders understand the site's internal language and intended structure, they stop seeing the question marks that first-time users see. Usability testing, clear conventions, concise writing, and accessibility practices are ways of recovering the user's view.

Important concepts

Usability

The degree to which a person can use a product to accomplish a goal without the process becoming more trouble than it is worth.

Self-evident

A design state in which users can understand purpose, priority, and available action almost immediately.

Self-explanatory

A fallback state in which a page may not be instantly obvious but contains enough cues for users to understand it quickly.

Question marks

Moments of avoidable uncertainty: unclear labels, hidden controls, ambiguous page purpose, confusing categories, or missing orientation.

Scanning

The user's common practice of visually searching for promising cues instead of reading a page from beginning to end.

Satisficing

Choosing the first option that seems good enough rather than evaluating every possible option.

Muddling through

Using a product successfully through partial understanding, habit, and trial rather than a complete mental model.

Visual hierarchy

The use of size, position, grouping, contrast, spacing, and nesting to communicate importance and relationships.

Convention

A familiar design pattern whose meaning users already know, such as recognizable search placement, shopping-cart icons, or link styling.

Noise

Visual or verbal clutter that competes with the information or action the user needs.

Happy talk

Generic welcome, promotional, or self-congratulatory copy that occupies space without helping the user.

Mindless choice

A decision point whose labels and context make the correct next action clear enough that the user does not have to deliberate.

Information scent

The cues in links, labels, headings, and navigation that suggest whether a path will lead toward the user's goal.

Persistent navigation

Navigation that remains available across pages, giving users a stable sense of site structure.

Site ID

The visible identity mark or name that tells users what site or product they are using.

Utilities

Secondary but important site-wide functions such as search, help, account access, shopping cart, or contact links.

Breadcrumbs

Hierarchical navigation cues showing where the current page sits in the site's structure and allowing users to move upward.

The trunk test

Krug's quick test for whether a page can orient a user who arrives without context: identify the site, page, major sections, local options, current location, and search.

Home page

The site's high-pressure orientation page, expected to communicate identity, mission, hierarchy, search, highlights, shortcuts, and starting points.

Tagline

A concise statement near the site ID that explains what the site or organization is and why it matters.

Religious debate

Krug's term for recurring design arguments based on personal or professional belief rather than user evidence.

Average user

The imagined generic user whom teams invoke to settle arguments, but who is too abstract to guide specific design decisions.

Usability test

An observation session in which a participant tries to perform realistic tasks while the team watches what is understandable, confusing, or broken.

Focus group

A discussion format for gathering opinions and reactions; useful for some questions, but not a substitute for watching people use an interface.

Reservoir of goodwill

The user's finite patience and trust, which a site can drain through friction or replenish through clarity, honesty, and convenience.

Mobile first

A design approach that starts with mobile constraints to force prioritization, while still respecting the full set of user needs.

Accessibility

The practice of making digital products usable by people with disabilities, including through semantic structure, keyboard access, readable contrast, labels, and assistive-technology compatibility.

User experience (UX)

The broader field that includes usability, interaction design, information architecture, interface design, content, research, and the overall quality of a user's encounter with a product or service.

Dark forces

Krug's ethical warning against using usability knowledge to deceive, pressure, or manipulate users instead of helping them act in their own interest.

References and Web Links

Primary book and edition information

• Steve Krug. Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web (and Mobile) Usability. New Riders / Peachpit / Pearson, 3rd edition, 2013/2014.
  • Steve Krug's official page for Don't Make Me Think, Revisited
  • Steve Krug's official table-of-contents PDF
  • Peachpit/Pearson publisher page with table of contents
  • Pearson sample-pages PDF for the 3rd edition
  • Open Library work and edition record
  • Google Books record for the New Riders edition
  • Ohrstrom Library catalog record with edition details and contents

Background and overview

• Wikipedia overview of Don't Make Me Think
• Steve Krug's official site
• Steve Krug's official page for Rocket Surgery Made Easy

Core usability ideas and related sources

• Steve Krug excerpts from the 3rd edition, published by Peachpit:
  • Things that make us think
  • Creating effective visual hierarchies
  • Why users like mindless choices
  • Why nothing beats a good tagline
  • Several true things about usability testing
• Nielsen Norman Group overview of information foraging
• Jakob Nielsen, "Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users"
• W3C Web Accessibility Initiative overview of WCAG 2
• W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2

Additional chapter summaries and study resources

These are secondary summaries and should be used alongside, rather than instead of, the original book.

• Readingraphics summary and chapter listing
• The Summarist overview and chapter-by-chapter pages
• SitePoint review and chapter overview
• HamerSoft chapter notes and review