Spotlight customer reviews:
|
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Very easy and insightful book on web design usability
Comment: I usually don't make time to do reviews (mainly because with kids you rarely have time just to read). But this was a great book on web design usability. I read it in about 3-4 days and it provided such a great approach to web design usability with so little effort that anybody doing any kind of web development needs to have this book on their shelf. Most of it is common sense ... but you don't realize it until after you read it. Once you read some of the chapters you kind of say to yourself ... "DUH! Why didn't I think of that before!" I wish all software development books could be written in such a fashion. You'll do yourself good by getting this book and reading it if you're a web developer.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Easy to read and immediately useful
Comment: Everyone who has any part in designing a UI should read this book. Krug outlines the essentials regarding design, hierarchy, navigation, and usability testing (perhaps the most important part of the book). The new edition also includes material on accessibility - he sounds preachier here, but for a good cause.
The format is attractive and easily digestible, and the book is short enough to be undaunting, with relevant and colorful illustrations.
BTW, I've found a serious flaw in the Amazon reviewer rating system. It only counts "helpful" votes ... this means that reviews (esp. for controversial books) basically become shouting matches, where people vote "no" to reviews with points of view they don't like, and vice-versa - regardless of merit or content of the review. This undermines the ratings of good reviewers who write thorough reviews of emotionally charged items.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Quick Read - Mountain of Information
Comment: Don't Make Me Think includes a lot of good suggestions and helps you realize that you need to make everything super obvious on your website. Also good information on usability testing
Customer Rating:
Summary: Should be a pre-requisite for any web design
Comment: As a graphic designer for over ten years I paid little attention to the conventions of web site design and definitely not the SEO end of it. Krug's book has opened my eyes to the importance of keeping it simple and identifiying the "visual rhythm" of a site and even more so the importance of a consistent structure.
All too often designers want to do something different but if it's a product or service you're trying to sell, you're doing that business a disservice by making it difficult to process visually and intellectually. When using the web people "thin slice", (Malcolm Gladwell's book "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" delves into this topic of the immediate perceptions of the brain) they know what it is that they're looking for, want the quickest route to it and know at a glance if they've found it.
Today's website is "the new business card". That first impression is possibly the only one you'll make, so make it your best. I highly recommend this book to anyone that is creating websites or having one designed.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great resource!
Comment: In a sense, I already knew every bit of advice that was in this book.
Then why is the book great?
Because, like a lot of people, I will frequently ignore my own common sense in favor of doing something I think is more 'clever'.
The book is like having a nice friend who constantly re-focuses your attention back to common-sense principles and away from 'clever' solutions.
As an example, when building a web-site, I debated how to color/stylize the site's hyperlinks. in an effort to reduce 'noise', i styled the hyperlinks without the traditional underline that most hyperlinks have.
This works great when you know where all the hyperlinks are, but when you dump someone onto the page for the first time, they *will* struggle (even if it's just a little bit) to figure out what's clickable.
This book made me go back and make things more obvious.
if i could give it 10 stars, i would.
|
|
|
