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

Resist the dark forces
Usability is, at its heart, a user advocate job: Like the Lorax, you speak for
the trees. Well, the users, actually. Usability is about serving people better by
building better products.
But there’s a trend—which I first noticed about five years ago—for some
people
3
to try to get usability practitioners to help them figure out how to
manipulate users rather than serve their needs.
4
3
 
[cough] marketing [cough]
4
 
There’s even a book called
Evil by Design: Interaction Design to Lead Us into Temptation 
by
Chris Nodder that explains how an understanding of human frailties can guide your design
decisions. Each chapter deals with one of the Seven Deadly Sins (Gluttony, Pride, Sloth, and so
on).
I have no problem with the idea of people asking for our help influencing
users.
If you want to know how to influence people, just read Robert Cialdini’s
classic book on the subject, 
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.
It’s
brilliant and effective, full of time-proven ideas.
Or read any of Susan Weinschenk’s books about the useful lessons that
neuropsychology research can teach us about human motivation and
decision making.

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I don’t have a problem with helping to 
persuade
people to do things, either,
as long as it’s not deceptive. The think-aloud protocol in usability tests can
often produce valuable insights into why attempts at persuasion succeed or
fail.
But I get anxious whenever I hear people talk about using usability tests to
help determine whether something is 
desirable
, because it’s just not
something usability tests are good for measuring. You may get a sense
during a test session that the participant finds something desirable, but it’s
just that: a sense. Whether something is desirable is a market research
question, best answered by using market research tools and instruments.
The real problem is that these people often aren’t actually asking for our
help determining whether something is desirable, or even for help in figuring
out how to make what they produce 
more
desirable. Instead, they’re looking
to usability to tell them how to make people 
think
it’s desirable, i.e., to
manipulate them.
Sometimes the intended manipulation is relatively benign, like using a
slightly hidden checkbox checked by default to automatically sign you up

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for a newsletter.
Sometimes it inches closer to the darkness, doing things like tricking people
into installing an unwanted browser toolbar
5
and changing their default
search and Home page settings while they’re not looking. We’ve all been on
the receiving end of this kind of deception.
5
 
[cough] Yahoo [cough]
You click on a link to download some free software.

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This opens a screen with three big “Start Download” links.
Not noticing the nearly invisible instructions, when nothing happens you
click one of them to start the download.

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A new page appears with another “Start Download” link, so you click
it...and end up downloading some software you don’t want.
At its extreme, though, it can cross the line into true black hat practices, like
phishing, scamming, and identity theft.
Just be aware that if people ask you to do any of this, it’s not part of your
job.
The users are counting on you.