I'd read this book long time ago. It comes to my mind again recently due to my job. Indeed, tough very easy to read, it's the bible of website usability, and below are some notes I take.

• Book: Don't Make Me Think - A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
• Arthur: Steve Krug
• Amazon customer review: 4.5 star out of 398 reviews
• Description: No complicated technology mentioned. Only high-level guideline.
  Details: please see here
  

1.          Don’t make me think: Krug’s first law of usability

2.          Scanning, satisficing, and muddling through

n   How we really the web: scanning, satisficing, and muddling through

n   We don’t read pages. We scan them.

n   We don’t make optimal choices. We satisfice.

n   We don’t figure out how things work. We muddle through.

3.          Designing pages for scanning, not reading

n   Create a clear visual hierarchy

n   Conventions are your friends

n   Break up pages into clearly defined area

n   Make it obvious what’s clickable

n   Keep the noise down to a dull roar

4.          Why users like mindless choices

n   What really counts is not the number of clicks it takes me to get what I want, but rather how hard each click is – the amount of thought required, and the amount of uncertainty about whether I’m making the right choice

n   Users want to know they’re on the right track

5.          Omit needless word

n   Happy talk must die

n   Instruction must die

6.          Street signs and breadcrumbs

n   Web navigation 101

o   Users are usually trying to find something

o   Users decide whether to ask first or browse first

o   If users choose to browse, they make their way through a hierarchy, using a sign to guide them

o   Eventually, if users find what they’re looking for, they’ll leave

n   The unbearable lightness of browsing

o   No sense of scale

o   No sense of direction

o   No sense of location

n   The overlooked purposes of navigation

o   It gives us something to hold on to

o   It tells us what’s here

o   It tells us how to use the site

o   If gives us confidence in the people who build it

n   Page name is important

o   Every page need a name

o   The name need to be in the right place

o   The name need to be prominent

o   The name need to match what I clicked

7.          Design homepage

n   Home page has to accommodate

o   Site identity and mission

o   Site hierarchy

o   Search

o   Teases

o   Timely content

o   Deals

o   Shortcuts

o   Registration

o   Show me what I’m looking for

o   Something I’m not looking for but wonderful

o   Show me where to start

o   Establish credibility and trust

n   Nothing beat a good tagline

n   Home page navigation can be unique

n   The trouble with pulldowns

o   You have to seek them out

o   They’re hard to scan

o   They’re twitchy

8.          Keep testing simple, so you do enough of it

n   Focus group are not usability

n   Testing one user is 100% better than testing none

n   Testing one user early in the project is better than testing 50 near the end

9.          Things that increase good will

n   Know the main thing people want to so on your site and make them obvious and easy

n   Tell me what I want to know

n   Save me steps whenever you can

n   Put effort into it

n   Know what questions I’m likely to have, and answer them

n   Provide me with creature comforts like printer-friendly pages

n   Make it easy to recover from errors

n   When in doubt, apologize