Reaction / Response

Introduction and Chapter One -- "Don't Make me Think"


As someone who has been raised to be a person of routine and discipline, it is entirely refreshing to read a book that states: "Designing, building, and maintaining a great Web site isn't easy. It's like golf: a handful of ways to get the ball in the hole, a million ways not to."

This is a wonderful analogy for someone like me: a person who loves to design and wants to hear professionals say there are multiple ways to get things right and what one person says works could be different from another. This is fine, so long as they both get a successful outcome. I need to hear this.

I am also a fan of researching for inspiration. I used to believe that checking on other people's work was essentially cheating, but being a designer now for ten years, I am thankfully rid of that mentality.

The approach on simplicity is a useful one. My first website that I designed back in 1999 was awful...of course, most websites, by comparison to today's standards are exactly that, but I wanted to put everything on every page. It was a disaster. So, cutting down the words in half and then taking half of what's left is good advice, as shown on page one of the first chapter. Great rule...most people could learn a lot from that one suggestion.

Keeping things obvious is a great idea as well. If you are selling something, make it easy to find. Clutter will only deter people, which means death for any business.

Making pages self-evident, as discussed in the latter portion of the first chapter makes a lot of sense, as well. I never took the time to think of the many mental steps we take when doing a simple task. As our attention span shortens the more interference we get from the ever-growing presence of ads. This translates to this simple fact: Keep it simple, stupid.