Steve Krug

doesn’t matter how many times I have to click, as long as each click is a mindless, unambiguous choice.

—KRUG’S SECOND LAW OF USABILITY

as long as each click is painless and they have continued confidence that they’re on the right track—following what’s often called the “scent of information.”

Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left.

—KRUG’S THIRD LAW OF USABILITY

It’s exactly like what Erik Jonsson describes in his wonderful book about how people get lost, Inner Navigation (Scribner, 2007).

It turns out that the first steps are crucial: people who start off lost tend to stay lost.

If you want people to use something you’ve built, they have to notice it first.

Problems turn out to have deep roots. When you go to fix some usability problems, it quickly becomes clear that they’re actually a symptom of some much larger unresolved conflict—about the site’s purpose or the company’s mission, for instance.

the last-hired/first-fired principle

Buy-in is OK in flush times, but when resources are short, you need people who are fanatics—who can’t imagine not spending time and money on creating a top-notch user experience.