This is a guest post by Suvam Prasad (https://www.linkedin.com/in/suvamprasad/). I am very glad to have his post.

This book is very special to me because it helped me to discover new perspectives of web designing mythology. The book is written by Steve Krug(a famous user experience professional). The book contained hardly 216 pages that give you enough knowledge and idea to understand web design usability, user accessibility, and how to be a great user experience designer. Most of the concepts mentioned are very beginner centric. The book revolves around web usability with actionable guidelines, conduct usability testing, understanding user interface design, which should be UCD(User-Centered Design). The book starts with the user interface myths. Whenever the user visits any site, they try to search the specific keyword or word; they are looking for their needs. The users are not going to read the long passage or articles on the site. It is unnecessary to include long paragraphs on the website if it is an e-commerce website or a selling-product-based website. The user always in a hurry to satisfy their itch, and the product should act as a painkiller.

Krug’s first law of usability

Any website should be self-evident or self-explanatory instead of making the user confused to navigate the proper direction. It explained not to include unnecessarily junky keywords to force the user to think about the product. There should be a difference between the elements in the web pages. If possible, the website should give proper direction to the user to get their things done without any cognitive workload or distraction. The website tends to solve the problem but to create buzzy questions in the user’s mind. The user never finds a good experience if the user culled more question marks while using a specific website.

Fact of Life

• The user doesn’t read pages. They scan them.
• The user doesn’t make optimal choices.
• They satisfice with the right choice. The user doesn’t figure out how things work. They muddle through.

Consistent visual hierarchies

• The more important something is, the more prominent it is.
• Things that are related logically are related visually. It says about grouping similar elements in a clearly defined area.
• Things are “nested” visually to show what’s part of what.
• Keep the noise down to a dull roar, that explained to avoid shouting, disorganization, and clutter within the webpages.

The Big Bang Theory of Web Design

In this particular, I understood where to place the right sections to reduce user flow faults. Writing a good tagline that characterizes the whole enterprise. Avoid using unnecessary white space within the layouts.

The Usability testing

The book briefly explained the usability test. We should conduct usability testing quite often whenever there are some changes in the product. Good usability testing means a product with less error-prone. The user experience designer needs to observe the tester to understand user behavior while using the product during usability testing.

Accessibility and you

In the end, making things more accessible benefits everyone. The developer also considered users who have a disability because _% of the population has a disability. We can fix the usability problems that confuse everyone.

• Add appropriate alt text to every image.
• Use heading correctly.
• Make your forms work with screen readers.
• Put a “Skip to Main Content” link at the beginning of each page.
• Make all content accessible by keyboard.
• Create a significant contrast between the text and the background.
• Use an accessible template.

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