In a meeting the other day we decided to bring in some of our customers and have them take a look at a new website we are building for them. I immediately thought of this book so I got it and read in a weekend. Rocket Surgery Made Easy by Steve Krug is “The Do-it-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems”. I love one of Steve’s other books, Don’t Make Me Think which is a great primer on building interfaces with good usability.
Rocket Surgery Made Easy is a short, easy read, just my kind of book. After reading this book I felt I was ready to sit down with a user and get feedback from them on our site. Steve is a veteran in doing usability testing and he imparts his wisdom in a easy to absorb way.
Three big take-aways from this book are:
– How to test any design, on a web page or hand drawn.
– How to find the most important problems
– And how to fix the problems you’ve found, using his “The least you can do” approach.
If you don’t have any experience in usability testing, but find yourself needing to do so, this is the book for you.
Steve Diamond says:
I love <i>Don't Make Me Think</i> as well. It's my website design bible. I somehow managed to miss hearing about <i>Rocket Surgery Made Easy</i> so I'm delighted to have found it mentioned here. Thanks.
4 April 2011, 1:08 am