Steve Krug - Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-it-yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems

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Rocket Surgery Made Easy

The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems

Steve Krug

Rocket Surgery Made Easy:
The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems

Steve Krug

New Riders
1249 Eighth Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
510/524-2178 510/524-2221 (fax)
Find us on the Web at: www.newriders.com
To report errors, please send a note to

New Riders is an imprint of Peachpit, a division of Pearson Education
Copyright 2010 by Steve Krug

Editor: Nancy Davis
Production Editor: Lisa Brazieal
Copyeditor: Barbara Flanagan
Design and production: Allison D. Cecil
Illustration: Mark Matcho

Notice of Rights
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information on getting permission for reprints and excerpts, contact .

Notice of Liability
The information in this book is distributed on an As Is basis, without warranty. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of the book, neither the author nor Peachpit shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the instructions contained in this book or by the computer software and hardware products described in it.

Trademarks
Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and Peachpit was aware of a trademark claim, the designations appear as requested by the owner of the trademark. All other product names and services identified throughout this book are used in editorial fashion only and for the benefit of such companies with no intention of infringement of the trademark. No such use, or the use of any trade name, is intended to convey endorsement or other affiliation with this book.

Its not rocket surgery and The least you can do are trademarks of Steve Krug.

ISBN-13: 978-0-321-65729-9
ISBN-10: 0-321-65729-2

To my Aunt Isabel
(Sister Rose Immaculata, O.P.),
who has prayed for me
every day of my life,

My brother, Phil
who worked his whole adult life
as a Legal Services attorney, keeping
families from ending up out on the street,

And all the other people like them
who spend their lives
making sure that things work out
for the rest of us.

Table of Contents

How this book came to be, some disclaimers, and a bit of housekeeping

What do-it-yourself usability testing is, why it always works, and why so little of it gets done

What a do-it-yourself test looks like

A plan you can actually follow

Why the hardest part is starting early enough

Who to test with and how to find them

Picking tasks to test and writing scenarios for them

And why you should use them even if, like me, you dont really like checklists

Conducting the test session

Getting everyone to watch and telling them what to look fo r

Comparing notes and deciding what to fix

Why doing less is often the best way to fix things

Some problems youre likely to find and how to think about fixing them

The art of playing nicely with others

Remote testing: Fast, cheap, and slightly out of control

Recommended reading

A few final words of encouragement

Opening Remarks Call me Ishmael

How this book came to be, some disclaimers, and a bit of housekeeping

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise
they make as they go by.

DOUGLAS ADAMS, AUTHOR OF THE HITCHHIKERS GUIDE
TO THE GALAXY, WHO WAS NOTORIOUSLY
LATE DELIVERING MANUSCRIPTS

I knew I wanted to write this book nine years ago, right after I finished writing Dont Make Me Think.

Without meaning to, in the process of writing it I had ended up convincing myself of three things:

Usability testing is one of the best things people can do to improve Web sites (or almost anything theyre creating that people have to interact with).

Since most organizations cant afford to hire someone to do testing for them on a regular basis, everyone should learn to do it themselves. And

I could probably write a pretty good book explaining how to do it.

There was just one small problem, though:

I hate writing.

Actually, I dont hate it so much as I find it, well, probably the most accurate word is agonizing .

And not Should I buy the white iPhone or the black iPhone? agonizing. More like red-hot-pokers-in-your-eyes agonizing. Ive always said that writing is the hardest work I know of and that I cant understand why anyone would do it unless someone was holding a gun to their head (which, of course, is what deadlines are all about).

As it turns out, though, it was probably a good thing that I wasnt motivated to write this book right away, because one of the nicest side effects of the first book was that it gave me the opportunity to teach workshops, which suit my nature much better than writing or consulting.

With workshops, you cant procrastinate: you either show up in the morning or you dont. And theres no homework. At the end of the day, youre finished. Period. The fi rst time I taught a workshop, when everyone had gone home I remember having this very odd feeling that my work was actually donesomething I hadnt felt in all my years of consulting. I highly recommend it.

For the first five years, my workshop was a combination lecture-demo format, where Id do brief expert reviews of attendees sites to show them how I thought about usability problems. I wanted to teach people how to do their own testing, but I couldnt figure out how to fit it into a one-day workshop.

Then three years ago, after a lot of pondering, I finally figured out how to do a workshop that would teach people to do their own testingincluding some hands-on practicein one day. I changed the format so the whole day was about the topic of this book: doing your own usability tests.

After teaching this new format for a few years, I understood a lot more about what people needed to know. (Its true: if you really want to learn how to do something, try teaching other people how to do it.) And having watched a lot of people learn to do it, I was even more convinced of the value of do-it-yourself testing.

Finally, last year, in a moment of weakness, I gave in and signed a contract (and acquired the necessary deadline/gun) to write this book. After all, there are only so many people who can afford a day-long workshop. I like to think that reading this will be a pretty good substitute.

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