Don''t Make Me Think, Revisited

Have you ever landed on a website and immediately felt lost—wondering where to click next or what on earth the company even does? In his classic on usability, Don't Make Me Think!, Steve Krug argues that the best websites are those that don’t force visitors to think. Every extra moment of hesitation—each microsecond of confusion—adds to the user's cognitive load, pushing them closer to frustration and away from what they came to do. Krug’s first law of usability is clear: don’t make me think.

Krug contends that designers’ biggest mistake is assuming users will stop and read, carefully reason, and logically move through a website. The truth is, users are scanning, clicking, guessing, and muddling through. They’re not reading—they’re doing, and they want to do it fast. Understanding this simple reality transforms how you see digital design. Instead of building based on internal preferences or aesthetics, Krug urges readers to prioritize intuitive clarity. The less users have to figure out, the more confident—and satisfied—they’ll feel.

Why Thinking Hurts the User Experience

Krug likens the user’s cognitive energy to a limited reservoir. Each time you make them stop to ask, “Is that clickable?” or “What do they mean by this?” you drain that reservoir. For example, he points out how ambiguous labels—like naming a job listing section “Career Central” instead of the obvious “Jobs”—force users to stop, interpret, and wonder if they’re in the right place. Even tiny details like inconsistent button colors or unclear icons can cause micro confusion that accumulates over time. The result: higher abandonment rates, lower user confidence, and frustration with your brand.

Instead, Krug advocates for obviousness over cleverness. A page should be so self-evident that someone landing on it for the first time can say within seconds, “Oh, this is a banking site,” or “This is where I log in.” Elegance comes not from complexity or novelty, but from simplicity so clear it disappears into the background. In Krug’s world, the perfect website is one that looks like it “just works.”

How We Really Use the Web

To support his argument, Krug outlines three “facts of life” about real users. First, we don’t read pages—we scan them. Web visitors are like sharks—they have to keep moving or they’ll die. Second, we satisfice instead of optimize. Borrowing from Herbert Simon’s idea of “satisficing,” Krug notes that users don’t pick the best option—they click the first one that looks good enough. Finally, we muddle through. Most of us don’t fully understand how things work—we just poke around until something does. The takeaway? If your design depends on people reading directions or following logical steps, it’s already failing.

This framing flips traditional design thinking. It’s not about making something “clever” or innovative; it’s about aligning with what people actually do online. In a world where every second counts, the winning sites are those that take thinking off the table altogether.

Clarity Is Emotional

Krug also highlights the emotional undercurrent of usability. A website that “just works” makes users feel smart and in control; a confusing one makes them feel stupid and anxious. Like a well-lit store, a clear site radiates trust and confidence. You may not consciously register it, but you feel it—and that feeling determines whether you return. He writes that clear design is like providing good lighting in a shop: everything simply looks better when it’s easy to navigate.

In essence, Don’t Make Me Think isn’t just a guide to web usability—it’s a manifesto for empathy. By viewing design through the eyes of the distracted, hurried, impatient human being behind the screen, you uncover what truly matters. Throughout the book, Krug lays out principles for web navigation, homepages, writing, testing, collaboration, and accessibility—all driven by one simple truth: the less users have to think, the more they’ll enjoy what you’ve made.

Across its pages, you’ll learn why people scan instead of read, how to use conventions wisely, why usability testing trumps opinion-based debates, and how being considerate to users builds long-term trust. Whether you’re designing a small site or an enterprise system, Krug’s bottom line stays the same: Don’t make them think—make them smile by making things easy.

Most designers believe users explore websites rationally: reading carefully, evaluating options, and making deliberate choices. Steve Krug shows this is a fantasy. After years of observing people in usability tests, he discovered three guiding truths about online behavior: we scan, we satisfice, and we muddle through.

Scanning Instead of Reading

Users rarely read web pages word for word. Instead, they skim for trigger words—like “Free,” “Buy Now,” or their own name—that signal relevance. Krug likens web reading to looking at billboards while driving 60 miles an hour: you glance, not linger. This behavior stems from urgency (we’re in a hurry), familiarity (we’ve been scanning newspapers and menus all our lives), and practicality (we only need a small portion of what’s on a page). The implication? Write and design for scanners. Highlight keywords, use clear headings, create visual hierarchies, and make important items pop at a glance.

Satisficing Over Optimizing

When faced with choices, people don’t weigh every option and select the best—they pick the first one that looks “good enough.” This phenomenon, first introduced by economist Herbert Simon, perfectly describes the average web user. On a shopping site, you’ll click the first link that seems to match your goal instead of comparing all alternatives. Why? Because optimizing takes time and effort, and the penalty for guessing wrong online is minimal—you can always hit the Back button. As usability expert Jakob Nielsen notes, the Back button is the Internet’s most-used feature. This reality means your interface should make “good enough” options easy to spot and forgiving to navigate.

Muddling Through—And Making It Work

Perhaps Krug’s most humbling insight is our reliance on guessing and improvisation. Most users never truly understand how a website works. They find something that appears to work and stick with it, even if it’s inefficient. He recalls seeing people type full URLs into Yahoo’s search box instead of the browser’s address bar—because they thought Yahoo was the Internet. Yet, despite the misunderstanding, they got where they wanted to go. The lesson? Build systems that tolerate imperfection. Assume people will enter input incorrectly, misinterpret labels, and backtrack often. The goal isn’t to make users suddenly smart—it’s to make the experience foolproof even when they act foolishly.

This “muddling mind” perspective changes everything about design priorities. Instead of explaining or lecturing, Krug encourages designers to remove obstacles, clarify signals, and reward curiosity. The less a user needs to learn, the less they’ll have to think. As Don Norman also argues in The Design of Everyday Things, good design aligns with how people actually behave, not how we wish they did.

Krug’s third chapter teaches that since users scan instead of read, web pages should act like billboards—immediate, clear, and readable in seconds. The art of effortless scanning comes down to five design strategies: visual hierarchy, conventions, clear areas, clickability, and minimal noise.

Establish a Clear Visual Hierarchy

Every page must visually communicate what’s important and how elements relate. Headlines, subheads, and clickable elements should look distinct. Group related items together, and make more important ones bigger, bolder, or higher on the page. Krug compares good web design to a newspaper layout, where even at a glance you can distinguish main stories, sidebars, and photos. If users can’t visually parse your site in seconds, they’ll feel lost before reading a single word.

Use Conventions and Familiar Cues

Designers often crave novelty, but users crave familiarity. By the time someone reaches your site, they’ve internalized dozens of web conventions—logos on the top left, shopping carts on the top right, underlined text means links. Krug warns against reinventing these without good reason. If you innovate, it must be both self-explanatory and clearly better. Otherwise, users waste mental energy decoding your creativity instead of enjoying your product.

Divide Pages Into Clear Sections

Just as stores label aisles, webpages should divide information into areas that are easy to recognize—navigation, content, ads, utilities. This structure lets users instantly orient themselves. Without clear boundaries, everything blurs into unreadable clutter. Eye-tracking research supports this: users immediately decide where to focus and ignore the rest. The clearer your sections are, the quicker they’ll find what matters.

Make Clickable Things Obvious

Any hesitation about what’s clickable breaks the “don’t make me think” rule. Links and buttons should be visually recognizable on sight—distinct color, underline, or conventional shape. Krug mocks sites that hide links behind fancy design elements. He reminds designers that people shouldn’t need to run their cursor over the page to discover functionality. When clickability is obvious, confidence rises; when it’s ambiguous, frustration multiplies.

Reduce Visual Noise

Finally, clutter kills focus. Krug distinguishes two kinds of “noise”: busy-ness (too many competing visuals like shouting banners) and background noise (small, unnecessary distractions). The cure is restraint. Whitespace, subdued colors, and selective emphasis guide attention. If everything yells, nothing is heard. In usability, simplicity doesn’t just look better—it performs better.

Krug’s second law of usability states: “It doesn’t matter how many times I click, as long as each click is mindless and unambiguous.” Users don’t fear multiple steps—they fear uncertainty. The real pain comes not from clicking more, but from pausing to interpret what to click next.

The Power of Obvious Choices

He draws an analogy to the game Twenty Questions, where asking whether something is “animal, vegetable, or mineral” eliminates confusion instantly. Each decision feels effortless because categories are clear. Web choices should feel the same way. Compare this to sites that use vague labels—like calling product categories “Home Solutions” or “Essentials.” You’re forcing mental effort where clarity should be automatic. Krug’s point: trade cleverness for transparency.

Cognitive Stress in Ambiguity

He recounts scenarios where ambiguous design adds unnecessary thinking. Imagine trying to download antivirus software and being asked to choose between “NAV for Windows 95/98” and “NAV for NT.” Even a technically inclined user pauses: “Do I have this version?” Multiply that hesitation across your site, and confidence plummets. In contrast, Amazon’s decision to let users type anything into one search box—title, author, keyword—shows the opposite principle. It alleviates decision fatigue.

How to Design Mindless Experiences

• Use plain, descriptive language (“Buy,” “Contact Us,” “Search Books”) over clever phrasing.
• Make the next step visually clear—buttons that look like buttons, headings that lead the eye forward.
• Eliminate redundant or confusing labels. If two options sound similar, merge or rename them.

Ultimately, the secret to mindless clicks is empathy. Every time you ask, “Will users know what that means?” or “Do they have to stop and think?” you get closer to Krug’s ideal of invisible usability—where progress feels effortless.

Krug’s third law of usability—get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left—comes from a single principle of good writing: clarity through brevity. Drawing inspiration from E.B. White’s The Elements of Style, Krug argues that most web content wastes words. Every extra sentence forces users to read (or skip), increasing noise and hiding what matters.

Happy Talk Must Die

“Happy talk” refers to fluff like “Welcome to our website!” or “We’re proud to serve you since 1998.” These introductions feel polite but add zero value. They’re the small talk of the internet—something users skip instantly while searching for action. Krug’s advice? Cut all self-congratulatory copy. No one visits your site to hear about your excellence—they come to accomplish a task.

Kill All But Essential Instructions

Web users don’t read instructions unless forced to. Hence, the best instruction is no instruction. Anything that can’t be made inherently obvious should be reduced to a few crisp lines. Krug shows this by condensing Verizon’s multi-paragraph survey message from 103 to 41 words—without losing substance. The shorter version works because it communicates purpose and direction at a glance.

This principle mirrors minimalist writing champions like Strunk and White or Seth Godin: fewer words mean more impact. As Krug puts it, shorter pages reduce cognitive noise, spotlight essential actions, and increase trust. The simpler the message, the faster users move forward—and the smarter your interface feels.

Navigation is the backbone of any website—it’s what tells you where you are, where you can go, and how to get back. Krug insists that confusing navigation is fatal. When users can’t find their way, they don’t just leave; they lose trust in the site altogether.

Navigation Is About Orientation

Krug likens good navigation to visiting a huge store like Sears. Upon entering, you immediately look for signs: “Tools,” “Home & Garden.” On a website, global navigation and categories serve the same role. They must be visible, consistent, and predictable on every page. Persistent navigation—the set of links that remains visible across the site—anchors users, reassuring them they’re still “in the same store.”

Essential Elements of Persistent Navigation

• A clear Site ID (usually the logo).
• Links to major Sections and Subsections.
• Utilities like “Help,” “Contact Us,” or “Shopping Cart.”
• A reliable Home link (the Site ID should link home).
• A visible Search box, since searching is the web’s “Ask for help” equivalent.

Wayfinding, Breadcrumbs, and Tabs

Because users constantly teleport between pages, websites must provide clear “You Are Here” signals. Breadcrumb trails, tabs, and page names act as street signs—each element reinforcing orientation. Krug lauds Amazon’s early use of tabs that made sections instantly recognizable by color and position. He even coined the “trunk test”: if you were blindfolded and dropped on a random page, could you identify where you are, what site this is, and how to get home?

If you can pass the trunk test, your site is intuitive. If not, your navigational design is working against human instinct rather than with it.

Krug calls designing a homepage the hardest job in web design. It must do everything at once—explain who you are, show what you offer, and guide users confidently to their goal—all within a few seconds. And because everyone in the company wants a piece of it, the homepage often becomes chaotic real estate.

The Homepage Has to Answer 4 Questions

• What is this site?
• What can I do here?
• What do they have to offer?
• Why should I be here and not somewhere else?

If visitors can’t answer these questions at a glance, they’ll leave. Krug stresses the importance of a tagline—a concise statement connected to the logo that defines the site’s purpose—and a short welcome blurb that gives context. Avoid mission statements and buzzwords; use everyday language that explains your site’s value immediately.

Above the Fold and “Golden Goose” Syndrome

The area above the fold—what’s visible without scrolling—is prime digital real estate. Everyone from marketing to IT wants a slice, but overcrowding it destroys clarity. Krug likens this to the “tragedy of the commons”: each department adds one more thing until the homepage collapses into confusion. The discipline lies in saying no and protecting the user’s clarity above all.

Show Them Where to Start

Finally, help users begin. Whether through a “Search” bar, a “Browse by Category” list, or clear entry buttons, every homepage should visually communicate the next step. Simplicity beats sophistication every time. Krug’s examples—like the clean design of Amazon or the guided flow of eTour—show that well-organized homepages don’t scream; they whisper direction.

In Don’t Make Me Think, Krug describes how teams waste hours arguing about details—colors, layouts, or supposed “best practices.” These endless debates, he says, are “religious arguments”: emotionally charged, unresolvable, and based on personal belief rather than evidence. His antidote? Stop debating and start testing.

The Myth of the Average User

There is no “average user,” Krug insists. Every web visitor brings unique motivations and mental models. Trying to design for the mythical “most people” leads to paralysis. The solution is not to predict what users like, but to observe what they do. Watching real users reveals insights no focus group ever could. Instead of asking “Do people like dropdown menus?” ask “Does this dropdown, with these options, work for our users?”

Testing Even One User Beats None

Krug urges teams to adopt low-cost usability testing—three to four users per round, once a month. Even quick sessions uncover major problems. He jokes that most teams focus their tests too late (“two weeks before launch”) or for the wrong reasons (“to choose between color schemes”). Instead, testing should begin early and continue iteratively. Each test reveals new, actionable improvements. The rule: “Testing one user early is better than testing fifty at the end.”

Focus Groups Are Not Usability Tests

Krug makes a sharp distinction between focus groups—where people talk about preferences—and usability tests—where individuals do tasks while being observed. The latter exposes real behavior; the former reveals only opinions. True usability emerges not from what users say they want, but from what they actually do when faced with your interface.

This evidence-first approach echoes iterative testing methods used by innovators from the Wright brothers to modern UX teams—build, test, fix, repeat. Over time, testing replaces ego with insight, creating designs that serve people rather than personal preferences.

In his later chapters, Krug connects usability to ethics: good design is good manners. Your website, he says, should behave like a courteous human being—helpful, honest, and considerate. When you hide information, force tedious steps, or waste users’ time, you’re being rude. Courtesy builds trust; discourtesy drains it.

The Goodwill Reservoir

Every user starts with a small reservoir of goodwill toward your site. Each frustration—slow loads, missing pricing, unnecessary registration—depletes it. Once it’s depleted, users leave—or worse, distrust your brand. Krug’s anecdote about airlines ignoring strike updates on their websites illustrates how silence communicates indifference. By contrast, transparency, empathy, and small conveniences—like easily finding a phone number—refill that goodwill.

What Courtesy Looks Like Online

• Tell users what they need upfront—no hidden fees or buried details.
• Make recovery easy: forgiving forms, undo options, clear error messages.
• Save users steps: prefill known data or offer direct links (“Track my package”).
• Apologize gracefully when something fails.

Ultimately, Krug argues that usability isn’t just efficiency—it’s respect. Treat users like guests, not intruders. A mensch, he reminds us (borrowing from Yiddish), is someone who does the right thing even when it’s inconvenient. Apply that principle to your product, and you’ll design experiences people actually love.

Steve Krug closes his book not with technical advice but with human wisdom: usability is empathy in action. It’s about doing the right thing for your users—and often, that means simplifying, testing, and cutting the fluff. As he puts it, anyone who makes a site even half usable deserves admiration; making it effortless is an act of generosity.

Throughout Don’t Make Me Think, Krug demystifies web design by stripping it to its essence: clarity, kindness, and common sense. Usability isn’t rocket surgery—it’s a mindset of humility. When you stop designing for yourself and start designing for real people, you stop asking, “How can we make users smarter?” and start asking, “How can we make this so clear they don’t have to think at all?”