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

Chapter 13. Guide for the perplexed
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 The Guide for the Perplexed 
(the real one) is a seminal commentary on the meaning of the
Talmud written in the 12th century by Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (better known as Maimonides).
I’ve just always thought it was the best title I’ve ever heard.
MAKING USABILITY HAPPEN WHERE YOU LIVE
I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees.
—
THE LORAX
, DR. SEUSS
I get a lot of email from people asking me some variation of this question:
OK, I get it. This usability stuff is important, and I really want to
work on it myself. How do I convince my boss—and his boss—that
they should be taking users seriously and allow me to spend time
making it happen?
What 
can
you do if you find yourself in an environment where your desire to
“do usability” isn’t supported?
Ya gotta know the territory
First, a little background about how the place of usability in the world has
changed.
Back in the late 1990s, Usability and User Centered Design (UCD) were the
terms most people used to describe any efforts to design with the user in
mind. And there were essentially two “professions” that focused on making
Web sites more usable: Usability (making sure things are designed in a way
that enables people to use them successfully) and Information Architecture
(making sure the content is organized in a way that allows people to find
what they need).
Now the term you hear most often is User Experience Design, or just User
Experience (UXD or UX, for short), and there are probably a dozen
specialties involved, like Interaction Design, Interface Design, Visual
Design, and Content Management—and, of course, Usability and
Information Architecture—all under the UX umbrella.

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One difference between User Centered Design and User Experience Design
is their scope. UCD focused on designing the right product and making sure
that it was usable. UX sees its role as taking the users’ needs into account at
every stage of the product life cycle, from the time they see an ad on TV,
through purchasing it and tracking its delivery online, and even returning it
to a local branch store.
The good news is that there’s a lot more awareness now of the importance of
focusing on the user. Steve Jobs (and Jonathan Ive) made a very compelling
business case for UX, and as a result usability is an easier sell than it was
even a few years ago.
The bad news is that where usability used to be the standard bearer for user-
friendly design, now it’s got a lot of siblings looking for seats at the table,
each convinced that their set of tools are the best ones for the job. The worse
news is that not many people understand the differences between the
specialties or the unique contributions they can make.
This is the field you’re playing on. So when someone tells you: “I’m in UX”
or “Usability is so 2002—it’s all UX now,” smile graciously and ask them a
few questions about how they’re learning about users, how they’re testing
whether people can use what they’re building, and how they get changes to
happen. If they don’t do any of those things, they need your help. If they do,
learn from them. It’s not what we call ourselves that matters, it’s the attitude
we bring and the skills we can contribute.