Their story
Beyond the book jacket
Steve Krug (pronounced “Kroog”) is an American usability consultant and author whose work helped make user experience design easier to understand and practise. He is best known for Don’t Make Me Think, a practical guide to creating websites and digital products that people can use without unnecessary confusion.
Krug came to usability by an indirect route. After studying English literature, he worked as a proofreader and technical writer. Documenting software taught him to notice where interfaces failed to behave as people expected, eventually drawing him into design meetings and usability research.
He spent more than 25 years as an independent usability consultant through his one-person firm, Advanced Common Sense. His clients included Apple, Bloomberg, Lexus, NPR and the International Monetary Fund. His second book, Rocket Surgery Made Easy, showed teams how to run frequent, inexpensive usability tests themselves.
His guiding idea is simple: creators are too familiar with their own products to see every source of confusion. Watching real people use what they build—and removing unnecessary mental effort—is the clearest route to better design.
“Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what is left.”
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