Don't make me think (about cancer)

It look me a long time to get around to reading it, but very little time to actually get through Don't Make Me Think which is a terrific endorsement of a usability book, really. And it was really helpful! It was all interesting, but I think that what will be most helpful for this project is his dos and don't of page layout and navigation--I will review the chapters in the polar bear book for more information, too, because I think that herein lies a lot of the problem with our site. People tend to get lost in it.

Some of what Krug says is at odds with the purpose of health-related info on our site, which is interesting. He talks about taking out words, but we HAVE to have them--it is all very heavy on information. How do we know at what point people will just stop looking? I guess that is related to another of his points, which really hit home: you build up a reserve of goodwill (or anger) as you use a Web site, and your trust level that the info will be there, for you to find, and that it will be accurate, often determines frustration level. So we shouldn't hide the contact info (according to Krug) and we need to be sure and minimize the happy talk (there's quite a bit of this about the good we do, blah blah)--and just get people the information they want. And not try to keep hammering the grantee aspects. Seems like a delicate balance. It would be helpful to find a Web site that does this really well-- all his examples are commercial, and I haven't seen a Komen site that really gets it right.

The final and probably most important point that got across to me in Krug's book is the absolute necessity of usability testing, I think it would be inexcusable to not do at least 1 round--I'll email Dr Bias and figure out what the deal is with the Lab. I believe Krug's argument that even slapdash usability testing is still 100 times better than none at all, so, really, it just has to happen. Plus I've never done it before, I think it will be fun (sort of). In a grad school kind of way.