Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (3rd Edition), by Steve Krug. 2013. New Riders, ISBN: 978–0321965516

With the huge movement of courses to an online format in 2020 that is continuing into 2021, it's a good time to take a look at aspects of the course that are in digital format. This includes course websites, syllabi, and assignments. Ideally, students would be able to navigate these things to find the information they needed quickly and easily without any help from the instructor. In practice, students often get lost in a tangle of hyperlinks, misinterpret directions, and can't find what they need without help. These experiences increase the undesirable difficulty of the course.

Desirable difficulties, a term coined by psychologist Robert Bjork (National Research Council, 1994), are anything that challenges the brain and leads to an increase in long‐term retention of information. Undesirable difficulties, on the other hand, are things that take up cognitive space, but do not enhance learning. Undesirable difficulties, such as unclear instructions or a course site that is difficult to navigate, may actually decrease learning because they can disrupt the process of storing information in long‐term memory (Chen et al., 2018). We can help decrease undesirable difficulties in courses, particularly in online courses, by providing students a course site that is easy to navigate and assignments with directions that are short and easy to follow. This has the added benefit of reducing the number of emails from students asking where things are on the website or what they are supposed to do in a given assignment!

To get started on making our course sites and assignments easier to navigate, we can look at the information currently available on web usability. Steve Krug, a usability consultant, has an excellent—and relatively short—guide to web usability through proper design. In his book, Don't Make Me Think, Revisited, Krug reviews the basic principles of web design for maximum usability, including mobile design. Although this book was originally published around 2000 and the Revisited (3^rd) edition was published in 2013, the general principles are still highly useful. People still navigate websites in the same way and have become used to certain conventions, like navigation links being either on the top or the left side of the page.

Don't worry, you don't have to know a single line of code to get the full benefit of this book! It's a fast read with plenty of illustrations and examples to explain the points made. It's also full of humor, which definitely helps the points to stick. Krug starts with what he calls his first law of usability: Don't make me think. The design of a website should make where to do and what to do so obvious to the user that they have to use no brainpower to find what they came for. For example, if a student is looking on a course site for an assignment, the link(s) to get there should be so obvious that they can just click, click, click and have their assignment without taking time to hunt for it.

But wait, what if we write instructions on how to find things? People won't read them, Krug says. They'll scan the website, stop on the first word or phrase that looks remotely like what they came for, and muddle their way through until they are either too frustrated to continue or they find what they want. This is why, Krug says, we need to design websites like billboards, with as few words as possible and navigation choices made obvious. Backing up and getting to the home page should also be easy to do. Krug points out that people don't mind clicking several times, as long as the path forward is clear and there's an easy way to back up if they click on the wrong thing. In fact, Krug notes that the Back button is the most frequently used button in a web browser!

After establishing general usability principles, Krug reviews how to apply those principles to a website and check to be sure they are applied correctly. This includes usability testing. Krug points out that usability testing can be done quickly and easily by a few people without any training and should be done often in the process of developing a website. For faculty putting together a course website, whether in a learning management system or through their own webpage, this usability test can be easily done by the course TA or a student or faculty who hasn't seen the course page before. All you have to do is sit them down in front of the course site, give them a few key tasks to do (maybe finding and downloading the syllabus or finding and submitting an assignment), and watch them do it. Have them describe what they're doing as they do it, take note of what they have trouble with, and correct it to improve ease of use. Maybe the syllabus takes too much time to find or the link to upload assignments isn't clearly marked. Things that may be obvious to the course instructor who put the website together may be confusing or difficult for someone who has never interacted with the course site before.

In the Revisited edition, Krug adds some guidelines for mobile use and accessibility. These are great chapters to browse, since many students have poor internet access off‐campus and may use a mobile device to access the course website. The course site should be just as accessible and usable on a mobile device as a laptop or desktop. Usability checks should include mobile devices as well. On the topic of accessibility, Krug states that allowing websites to be accessible to people with disabilities usually improve accessibility for everyone. This is a great point and not often made. However, things like larger font size, more separation between sections on a website, and explanations of what images are in alt text improve readability for all, not to mention the alt text explaining what an image is can be useful in situations where the image doesn't load properly.

The same usability principles for websites can be applied to instructions for assignments. Assume students won't carefully read the instructions from beginning to end but will scan them looking for specific pieces of information. Make the instructions as short and to the point as possible, preferably in bullet format rather than paragraph format. Make it easy for them to head in the right direction. Have someone look over the assignment and tell you what they think they're supposed to do. Correct as needed. In short, don't make them think about whether they are doing the assignment correctly. Instead, make them think about the course material, which is what they really should be thinking about in the first place.

再谈“不要让我思考：网络可用性的常识方法”（第3版），作者：史蒂夫·克鲁格（Steve Krug）。2013年。《新骑手》，国际标准书号（ISBN）：978–0321965516

随着2020年课程向在线形式的大规模转移（一直持续到2021年），现在是查看课程数字形式的好时机。这包括课程网站，教学大纲和作业。理想情况下，学生将能够浏览这些内容，而无需教师的任何帮助即可快速轻松地找到所需的信息。在实践中，学生经常会迷失在超链接的混乱中，误解了方向，并且在没有帮助的情况下找不到所需的东西。这些经验增加了课程的不良难度。

心理学家罗伯特·比约克（Robert Bjork）（国家研究委员会，1994年）创造的一个理想的困难就是挑战大脑并导致长期保留信息的任何事物。另一方面，不希望有的困难是占用认知空间但不会增进学习的事物。不良的困难，例如不清楚的说明或难以导航的课程站点，实际上可能会减少学习，因为它们可能会破坏将信息存储在长期记忆中的过程（Chen等人，2018年））。通过为学生提供易于浏览的课程站点以及分配简短且易于遵循的指导，我们可以帮助减少课程中特别是在线课程中不必要的困难。这样做还有一个好处，那就是减少了学生发出的询问网站上的内容或在给定作业中应该执行的操作的电子邮件数量！

要开始使我们的课程站点和作业更易于浏览，我们可以查看有关网络可用性的当前可用信息。可用性顾问史蒂夫·克鲁格（Steve Krug）通过适当的设计，为网络可用性提供了极佳且相对简短的指南。克鲁格（Krug）在他的《不要让我思考》一书中回顾了Web设计的基本原理，以实现最大的可用性，包括移动设计。虽然这本书最初是在2000年左右出版和再访（3^次）版出版于2013年，基本原则仍然是非常有用的。人们仍然以相同的方式浏览网站，并且已经习惯了某些约定，例如导航链接位于页面的顶部或左侧。

不用担心，您不必知道任何代码即可获得本书的全部好处！快速阅读，并附有大量插图和示例以说明所提出的观点。它也充满幽默感，这绝对有助于坚持要点。克鲁格从他所谓的第一条可用性定律开始：不要让我思考。网站的设计应该使用户在哪里做和做什么都显而易见，他们不必动脑筋就能找到想要的东西。例如，如果学生正在课程站点上寻找作业，那么到达该地点的链接应该非常明显，以至于他们可以单击，单击，单击并进行作业，而无需花费时间去寻找它。

但是，等等，如果我们编写有关如何查找东西的说明怎么办？克鲁格说，人们不会读它们。他们将扫描网站，停在看上去很像他们所追求的第一个单词或短语上，然后弄乱他们的方式，直到他们要么感到沮丧而无法继续下去，要么就找到了他们想要的东西。克鲁格说，这就是为什么我们需要设计广告牌之类的网站，用尽可能少的单词，使导航选择变得显而易见。备份并转到主页也应该很容易。克鲁格指出，人们不介意多次单击，只要前进的道路是明确的，并且如果他们单击了错误的内容，则有一种简单的方法可以进行备份。实际上，Krug指出“后退”按钮是Web浏览器中最常用的按钮！

建立通用的可用性原则后，Krug会审查如何将这些原则应用于网站并检查以确保正确应用了这些原则。这包括可用性测试。Krug指出可用性测试可以由几个人快速，轻松地完成，而无需任何培训，因此应该在开发网站的过程中经常进行。对于教师将课程网站放在一起，无论是在学习管理系统中还是通过自己的网页，可以由课程TA或以前没有看过课程页面的学生或教师轻松地进行此可用性测试。您所要做的就是将他们坐在课程现场的前面，为他们提供一些关键任务（例如查找和下载课程提纲或查找并提交作业），并看着他们完成任务。让他们描述他们的 按照他们的做法去做，记下他们遇到的问题，并进行纠正以提高易用性。提纲可能要花太多时间才能找到，或者上载作业的链接没有明确标记。对于那些以前从未将课程网站与之交互过的人来说，将网站放在一起的课程指导员可能会感到有些困惑或困难。

在修订版中，Krug添加了一些有关移动使用和辅助功能的准则。这些章节非常适合浏览，因为许多学生在校外无法上网，并且可以使用移动设备访问课程网站。课程站点应该与便携式计算机或台式机一样在移动设备上可访问和使用。可用性检查也应包括移动设备。关于可访问性，克鲁格指出，允许残障人士访问网站通常可以改善所有人的可访问性。这是一个好点，并不经常提出。但是，诸如更大的字体大小，网站上各个部分之间的更大分隔以及对替代文字中的图片的说明等内容可以提高所有人的可读性，

网站的相同可用性原则可以应用于分配说明。假设学生不会从头到尾仔细阅读说明，但是会扫描他们以查找特定的信息。使说明尽可能简短明了，最好以项目符号格式而不是段落格式。使他们容易朝正确的方向前进。让某人查看作业，并告诉您他们认为他们应该做什么。根据需要进行更正。简而言之，不要让他们考虑他们是否正确地完成了作业。相反，让他们考虑课程材料，这是他们真正应该首先考虑的。