Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems (Voices That Matter)

Krug writes for real people, whether they're Usability experts or not. He offers advice that is possible for anyone with some aptitude for the subject to follow. Any organisation that wants to improve their UX and doesn't know where to begin should start here. The book is un-dauntingly short, but covers plenty of subject matter. It's written without jargon and is very informal. It's very easy to read and makes you feel like you can do it - I'm not sure there's anything more important than that when you're getting started.

Practical, with some great non-obvious bits. And enjoyable to read while remaining concise. And now I need another seven words.

A very easy to read book about usability testing in practice, actually kind of "How to" manual but even though I was laughing aloud several times while reading it, very well written. I'd recommend it if you tend to do some usability testing and would like to get a serious advice from Steve, who has more than 20 years of experience in the area. At the end of the paperback version you will also get 45 days online access to the book on "Safari Books Online".

This book changed my career. I've got hands dirty into usability testing and convinced colleagues in a very old-school context (logistics!) to do it, because of what I've learned (and directly applied) from this book. I've coached others with this too. It's just too good not to read for anybody working in Tech in functions around Design, Product Management, Usability, and UX.

Bought it ages (years!) ago, but only just thought to write a review. A great book. Really made me think about our sites and what we should be doing and why. They're 'rules' that I now live by when designing new sites or rejigging older ones.

Good book to encourage getting started on first usability tests with little resource. In just a few hours can get started and have handy script.

Tremendous actionable advice. This entire book is all killer and no filler. You feel like some authors might have made this book 5 times longer and repeated themselves or padded it out but not this. It's small but you know you've learned something at the end of it.

Where this is a good book, and nice Intro to ux, the first few chapters are simple repeating the earlier book bit still an excellent and simple read

This is a great book to get you started with usability testing. No excuses now. Easy to read with practical how-to scripts to follow.

Steve makes it very practical and super clear . You can't get usability tests wrong if you read this book.

Ottimo libro, l'ho trovato interessante e pieno di spunti. L'argomento è trattato in modo molto pratico e in linguaggio molto semplice.

Steve Krug hat in diesem Buch seine langjährige Erfahrung von Usability-Tests im kleinen zusammengefasst. Als Alternative zu großen, professionellen und teuren Labortests mit statistischer Relevanz propagiert er hier kleine monatliche Testrunden mit wenigen repräsentativen Test-Usern, denen er eine Webseite und einige Aufgaben zur Abarbeitung vorgibt. Er bittet diese Teilnehmer, laut dabei zu denken und nimmt Bildschirm und Ton auf. Diese Tests decken typischerweise die gravierendsten Usability-Probleme einer Webseite auf. Krug stellt jedoch gleich zu Beginn des Buches fest, dass man so auch alle möglichen Produkte testen kann. Die wirklich erstaunlichen Erkenntnisse stehen ungefähr in der ersten Hälfte des Buches. Danach werden die Umsetzungsdetails erklärt. Wem das noch nicht umfassend genug ist, bekommt vom Autor weiterführende Bücher vorgeschlagen. Dieses Buch ist bereits ein Klassiker.

BOUGHT THIS BOOK THE MINUTE I REALIZED IT WAS OUT: Having been a "Usability Professional" for a number of years, I purchased this Steve Krug book, the minute I knew he had another book out, without even paying attention to what it was about. This guy is just that good. This enthusiasm was due to his previous book "Don't Make Me Think" which was a great book on how to make more usable web sites. First I was surprised, as initially I had not realized it was a book for User testing for non-Usability professionals... Next, I thought, Wow, this is a great book too. BASIC IDEA: The whole idea is to do quick usability tests with a few users, that are reasonably representative of your end users. This test would be viewed by your stake holders and be done in one morning each month during various stages of development of your site. This way, it gets to the right people when it's needed. Anyone who does usability work, knows how laborious and costly tests can be. However that's nothing compared to the sales pitch that has to be done, to get even the high impact issues fixed. There are always excuses. This Books Suggestion for Testing: * Lessens the cost of the text * Allows the testing to be more immediate * Gets the decision makers in front of it and hopefully behind the necessary changes with funding. This book has clearly defined steps on how to do this: * Software recommendations * Some scripts * How to recruit * How to run single morning tests. Also recommendations for approaching changes: * Get to the basic issues * Get them fixed * Let the trivia wait. * Tweaking is better than a redesign, and it is more likely to happen. However read the book on this, I'm only quickly paraphrasing. QUICK SUMMARY: As before his style of writing is conversational and sparse, giving you what you need to know when. It is laid out in a way that is brief but complete and very easy to read. Hmmm, sounds like he took his own teachings to heart. There are 16 chapters (and you can see inside the book here; so go look) He covers the why and how you can do a usability test on any site and get buy-in from your team when changes need to be made. Usability professionals can benefit from this book as well, as it has a somewhat interesting take on how to get Users in front of the Teams that make decisions on what gets changed. Since time is at a premium and Usability tests speak for themselves, this is one way, to get the money where it needs to go. All in all another winner of a book...now I'm waiting for the next one...