Don't Make Me Think, rev 4: A Common Sense Approach to UX Research and Design

When Steve Krug wrote the third edition of Dont Make Me Think in 2013, it already had half a million readers and a reputation as the bible of usability. People seemed to love that it was short, witty, profusely illustrated, and full of useful and unique insights about how people actually used digital stuff. He thought he was finally through with writing, and he liked that idea.

But then things changed. Usability became, as he puts it, a wholly owned subsidiary of UX design, a gold rush of feverish hiring transformed the profession, AI arrived to either make UX professionals incredibly productive or to put them all out of a joband Steve decided he couldnt resist writing one more edition.

This fourth edition is still short enough to read on a plane ride (as many people did with the third), still a fun read (for a technical book), and still a uniquely useful guide to understanding how to design for real people.  Its still short enough to read on a plane ride (as many people actually have), still a fun read (for a technical book), and its still a uniquely useful guide to understanding how to design for people.

This new edition retains and updates Steves core principles, and adds entirely new chapters like

• FAQs About AI is a thorough treatment of the elephant in the room: What AI is and isnt, how its likely to progress, and how it will affect the people who design products and the people who use them.
• We Are The Lorax talks about things like ethics, maintaining the role of user advocate, and career survival in the modern UX world.
• Quant And Qual which explains how combining UX data and observation makes for better decisions.

FROM CHAPTER 16: UX, SAY HELLO TO AI!

The idea of fully automated UX/UI design is nothing new. I remember being at a conference 10 years ago where a presenter told a room full of UX people Youll all be out of a job in a few years, because what you do will all be automated. One-click web sites, for instance. The audience was so skeptical they barely knew how to react, and I remember thinking that it was a good thing they didnt have pitchforks. 

26 years and four editions in, Dont Make Me Think keeps making me think. And once again, Steve pulls off an impossible balancing act: Deepening our understanding of core UX practices, while giving sage advice about how to deal with the new stuff, like our new best friend Al.

Lou Rosenfield, co-author of Information Architecture for the Web and Beyond and Publisher at Rosenfeld Media