Plain Style and Credibility
Don’t
Make Me Think was written by Steve Krug who is an experienced
information architect. Based on the author’s previous experience, he taught the
audiences how to create more user-friendly web content, so that the users can
quickly meet their need. This book is suitable for people who work in web
design, especially for beginners. Unlike most of text book, Don’t Make Me Think was written in a
very plain, humor and conversational style. The plain style that the author
used make his book easy to read.
There are plenty
of books introducing wen content in the market. Some of the book are over
technical that exclusive to beginners of web design. Many instruction of web
content tend to make web content design as theory but not practice. However, Don’t Make Me Think is one of the example
that using plain style to give web designer a start. As Steve Krug stated in
his blog, the reasons why this book was popular and successful was that, it is
short, easy, engaging reading; it is an introduction for beginners and it succeeded
in his bosses that it had successfully told his boss what he has been trying to
say.
The author stated
his first law in the title of the book, “Don’t Make Me Think”. And he used the
first chapter to explain what does “don’t make me think” and why is it
important. During the whole book, the author used first person all the time.
Krug also used very colloquial language to make his writing sounds like a
face-to-face conversation with readers, for example, when mentioned that it is
necessary to make audience who barely know about the page know what they are
doing, the author assumed what the audience would think and wrote them down,
like “Oh, it's a_." (With any luck, she'll say, "Oh, it's a_.
Great!" But that's another subject.).” (Krug, Chapter 1) It sounds more
connected to most people.
In this book, the
author mostly used active voice. By using active voice, this writing was more
readable. For example, the author said, “When we're designing pages” instead of
saying “when pages are being designed” (Krug, Chapter 2); he said, “They took
the first reasonable plan” instead of saying “the first reasonable plan were
taken”. Statistics in VisibleThread Readability showed that, the percentage of
using passive voice in chapter 2 is 2.63%. The three sentences that used
passive voice are also very clear. (“You may be
surprised.”, “And muddling through is not limited to beginners” and “(I wouldn't be surprised”) (Krug,
Chapter 2). And there were only two sentences that hided the verbs.
In
Don’t Make Me Think, the author made
the paragraphs and sentences as short as possible. And as you can see in the
picture below, he also gave space between every paragraph, so that there were
not too much information thrusting together.
Another strategy that the author used was
listing information. As we can see in the picture above, the author separated
information and list them. 
listing information so that audience
could find the key message directly.
Krug stated the reason why we should read
the book in his blog. He didn’t say his own answer but quoted the comment from
Amazon reviewer who said “Absolutely everyone should read this book. The
internet would be a far better place.” Statistic on Amazon showed that, 74%
customers gave five stars and said this book was simple, straightforward and
helpful to them. Some people even said it was a bible of web design. However,
is it true that everyone should read it, and everyone benefits from it? People
who gave three stars or even less took up 9%. Most of customers who gave three
stars even less said that this book was “just common sense, as he says”, and
one customer said, “it didn't leave me with enough actionable tactics to apply.”
Some people said the examples that the author used were out-of-date and this
book was overrated. They said it was nice to read it, but it was not very
useful resource.
This book still works for most people,
especially beginners. But the author said that he constantly
heard that “I gave it to my boss. He read it–because it’s short–and finally
‘got’ what I’ve been trying to tell him for years about usability.” This
book worked for people in a higher position. It is questionable that how those
“common sense” and the plain language persuaded “boss” who should be also
worked in this field for many years and experienced. It sounds not persuasive
that they have never realized the problems that the author pointed out. What’s
more, in a work place, the use of formal language often decides whether your
writing is trustful, especially when writing to people work in upper class. As
one of the customer in Amazon said, this book doesn’t seem professional. The
reasons that I think why those “bosses” were persuaded is that the identity of
Steve Krug added credibility for him. And since what he mentioned in his book
are “common sense”, so we can assume that those bosses have already known it
but when those knowledge were written down and printed out, it looked more
credible.
Part of the credibility of a plain style
come from the content, but also depend on the identity of the author. Audience
might be persuaded and default that what they are going to read is credible and
valuable when they know the author’s identity. Furthermore, credibility of this
book also depends on how much knowledge that audiences already have, how much expectation
that audiences have to this text and how they want to use this text. In terms
of Don’t Make Me Think, based on the
research I did, the examples that the author used in this book are “out- of-
date” for lots of people. As one of the reader of this plain style and a beginner
of web content, I was effectively taught something through the use of plain style,
but I also felt some questions I have, or maybe a lot of audiences of this book
have, haven’t got answered. It may reduce the credibility of this text in a
certain degree. The most typical problem is, the title of this book is Don’t Make Me Think, however, there is
not a detailed answer or method about how to prevent audiences from unnecessary
thinking. However, there are also people say that the methods and theories are
more important than examples. They believe that a successful web designer
should be able to draw inference of other cases from one instance.
Overall, for author
who uses plain style, should also provide useful information in hi text. But for
audience of the text, should make sure what are their goal and purpose. The strategies
used in this text can prove credibility of the author that he is a experienced
teacher of this field. We can also see common knowledge as a reminder to web designer
that they should always put web users needs first and don’t make them think.
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