"Don't Make Me Think" Ch.1-5

After reading chapters 1-5 in Steve Krug's book, "Don't Make Me Think", I found numerous bits of advice that were helpful that I need to remember. I figured I'd jot them down. Krug cleverly used his title headings throughout each chapter as if they were mantras to remember regarding usability. Here are some that stood out to me:

-The obvious one, Don't make me think!
-You can't make everything self-evident.
Your goal should be for each page to be self-evident, but sometimes you have to settle for
self-explanatory.
-We don't read pages. We scan them.
-We don't make optimal choices. We satisfice.-choosing the first reasonable option.
-We don't figure out how things work. We muddle through.
-Create a clear visual hierarchy.
-Conventions are your friends.
-Break up pages into clearly defined areas.
-Make it obvious what's clickabel.
-Keep the noise down to a dull roar.
-Happy talk must die.
-Instructions must die.

Project 1: Reasons for Blog Template

I have made this blog, without much customization. It is a simple journal with not much deviation from the template given to me from blogger.com. The reason for this, is because of my inexperience with html code and usability in general. I do, however, hope to make some improvements, throughout the semester as I learn more about usability. This simple template right now, shows postings of my thoughts regarding this class.

The usability of this template is pretty much self-explanatory. I have the main heading, "Mark Bune Online Journal", at the very top, then I have the blogs on the left. On the top right corner, I have included the a brief summary of the purpose of this site. Below this, I have the archive link. Although this is a template from blogger.com, I was able to choose the color. I felt the combination of green, gray, and orange was effective. The orange to me seems to really bring the title of each blog into focus. I feel this color is a good indicator of hiearchy in terms of the page elements. I also had the option to change certain fonts. I went with Arial for the header and text font, Verdana Bold for the title font, and Trebuchet Bold for the sidebar font. I feel the spacing for the arial font feature brought the letters of each word closer together and made it easier for me to read compared to the other fonts I experimented with. I chose Trebuchet Bold with a smaller font to differentiate from Arial slightly. I also made the sidebar text underneath "Online Journal CD225" a darker gray than from the original text to bring more focus to it....and this is just the beginning.

Another try

I am going to try this another time.

A blog

I hope this blog works.