Food for thought - "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug.

Unfortunately this isn’t food related but it is internet related so it’s only slightly less important. Most people who surf the interwebs on a regular basis rarely realize how easy and seamless the travel from site to site or link to link is. You can travel into the depths of reddit with a few clicks or a convenient search bar and be right back on the front page with a finger stroke. I myself never really considered this or what it would be like if the websites and blogs I loved so much weren’t so user friendly until I read “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug. In the short read is a basic guide with tips and tricks to optimizing your website or blog. I found the psychology and break down of web user behavior very interesting. Krug describes people like myself and others who waste hours on the internet to actually be quite carful with what we waste that time on. I hadn’t really considered this but as I scrolled through an article on Gizmodo and another on Buzzfeed I realized his observation was spot on. I barely paid any mind to the article on Buzzfeed because it had a video you had to watch along with text. On Gizmodo the site designers had a similar article but with embedded GIF’s that played over and over automatically to accompany the text. So I could simply read, look up and continue reading and get all the info that the article had to offer. This kind of thing sounded ridiculous when I first considered it and kind of sad at the same time but its true. I don’t want to waste the time I’m wasting. I want to waste time on the Internet efficiently. The main thing I think I took away from the book though was how accurate the title was and what it meant. “Don’t Make Me Think” literally means do not make me think about browsing the internet. Do not make me think about how to navigate this website. If I went on Facebook and it took me more than 3 clicks to get to my profile I would be frustrated, sadly. It’s a little pathetic but very true. This blog is of my own content but not my own design. The people who created the template’s had feasibility in mind every single step of the way. The internet is an invaluable tool and outlet to share information but no one would want to read any of it if it wasn’t easy enough to do while walking to class or (hopefully not) driving a car. Krug illustrates that a good website or blog has solid content that can be experienced almost mindlessly. That may sound derogatory but it goes back to how he describes people and the way we all value our time. When I do decide to make a website of my own I will keep that in mind. Because who wants to read about food if it takes them 2 minutes to figure out how to get to the articles.