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10 Small Design Mistakes We Still Make

Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug

Eugen Eşanu
UX Planet

The saying that “good design is obvious” is pretty damn old, and I am sure it took different shapes in the previous centuries. It referred to good food, music, architecture, clothes, philosophy and everything else.

We forget that the human mind changes slowly, and the knowledge you have about human behaviour will not go old for at least 50 years or so. To make it easy for you, we need to keep consistent with a couple of principles that will remind us of how to design great products. We should be told at least once a month about these small principles until we live and breathe good design.

The human brain’s capacity doesn’t change from one year to the next, so the insights from studying human behaviour have a very long shelf life. What was difficult for user twenty years ago continues to be difficult today — J. Nielsen

Revisiting: Don’t Make Me Think

Steve Krug laid out some useful principles back in 2000, after the dot-com boom which are still valuable and relevant nowadays. Even after his revised version, nothing changed. Yes, you will tell me that…

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Responses (104)

Use plenty of headings

if we had a dime for every time we said it, and a dollar for every time it was ignored…

Before reinventing the wheel, you have to understand the value (time, effort, knowledge) that went into what you are trying to disrupt and innovate.

We are conditioned by decades of computer use that grey indicates an inactive tool. Today’s designers have an obsession for hiding controls until you need them so that I have to think where they might be hidden, and using grey to denote active…

Why is this happening? Life is a much more stressful and demanding environment than an app’s delights and subtle effects.

YES! THIS is USER experience. Doing things with consideration for the user, not your ego.