Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited a common Sense Approach to Web Usability Steve Krug

Unmoderated remote testing.
Services like UserTesting.com provide
people who will record themselves doing a usability test. You simply
send in your tasks and a link to your site, prototype, or mobile app.
Within an hour (on average), you can watch a video of someone doing
your tasks while thinking aloud.
5
 You don’t get to interact with the
participant in real time, but it’s relatively inexpensive and requires

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almost no effort (especially recruiting) on your part. All you have to do
is watch the video.
5
 
Full disclosure: I receive some compensation from UserTesting.com for letting them use my
name. But I only do that because I’ve always thought they have a great product—which is why
I’m mentioning them here.
Try it, you’ll like it
Whatever method you use, try doing it. I can almost guarantee that if you do,
you’ll want to keep doing it.
Here are some suggestions for fending off any objections you might
encounter:
The Top Five Plausible Reasons for not Testing Web Sites

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Larger Concerns and Outside
Influences

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Chapter 10. Mobile: It’s not just a city in Alabama
anymore
WELCOME TO THE 21ST CENTURY — YOU MAY EXPERIENCE
A SLIGHT SENSE OF VERTIGO
[shouting] PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWERS! [softly] Itty-bitty living
space!
—ROBIN WILLIAMS AS THE GENIE IN 
ALADDIN
, COMMENTING ON THE UPSIDE AND
DOWNSIDE OF THE GENIE LIFESTYLE
Ahh, the smartphone.
Phones had been getting gradually smarter for years, gathering in desk
drawers and plotting amongst themselves. But it wasn’t until the Great Leap
Forward
1
that they finally achieved consciousness.
1
 
Introduction of the iPhone June 2007.
I, for one, was glad to welcome our tiny, time-wasting overlords. I know
there was a time when I didn’t have a powerful touch screen computer with
Internet access in my pocket, but it’s getting harder and harder to remember
what life was like then.
And of course it was about this same time that the Mobile Web finally came
into its own. There 
had
been Web browsers on phones before, but they—to
use the technical term—sucked.
The problem had always been—as the Genie aptly put it—the itty-bitty
living space. Mobile devices meant cramped devices, squeezing Web pages
the size of a sheet of paper into a screen the size of a postage stamp. There
were various attempts at solutions, even some profoundly debased “mobile”
versions of sites (remember pressing numbers to select numbered menu
items?) and, as usual, the early adopters and the people who really needed
the data muddled through.
But Apple married more computer horsepower (in an emotionally pleasing,
thin, aesthetic package—why are thin watches so desirable?) with a carefully
wrought browser interface. One of Apple’s great inventions was the ability
to scroll (swiping up and down) and zoom in and out (pinching

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and...unpinching) very quickly. (It was the 
very quickly