Uploaded March 2023 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Usability is for everybody. It's not some super arcane topic of human inquiry that must be left only to the anointed select few professionals who have "user experience" in their title.
More importantly, everything you design has usability problems that you can fix. Even a back-end system needs to be implemented in a way so that the humans who try to work with it or develop against it are able to do so without frustration or confusion.
A few years ago, a coworker at my day job purchased the book Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug and sent it to me. (Thank you Gurudev!) It has been extremely beneficial for me and was important feedback. Software developers like solving complex problems. Web users want clarity and simplicity. Those two things don't naturally harmonize, so you need to invest the effort to see how you can reduce the cognitive load on your users.
Even if you're the perfect subject matter expert on the topic of your product, you will quickly become blind to the usability issues of it because you are constantly working with it and testing it. When you start actually watching other people use your product, it will be eye-opening and humbling to see them muddle through something that you have spent so much time designing and testing.
But, you'll be able to reflect on what you saw, find the three-ish most important usability issues you can fix with minimal effort and take action. Over time your product will be significantly more usable compared to the status quo. It won't be quite as usable as it would be if you could afford a dedicated professional user experience designer to extensively research every feature. (There aren't enough to go around anyway.) But this is realistic and achievable. Do it.
This video covers:
00:00:12 Introduction
00:01:28 How Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug inspired me
00:01:56 The idea of T-Shaped skills
00:03:06 Don't be afraid to start off by doing something badly. Always be a noob at something
00:04:53 Why you should prioritize user experience research as a skill to develop
00:08:20 Everything has a usability component (even back-end) and there is no shortage of examples of bad usability
00:09:13 Even if you are a subject matter expert, you still want to test with other users because people are different
00:09:56 There is no shortage of low hanging fruit from a usability standpoint in your project
#screencast #agile #softwaredevelopment #learntocode #uxd #uxr #userexperienceresearch #usability #stevekrug #simonsinek #startwithwhy #dontmakemethink #notrocketsurgery #wiki #whystatelesscode
Note: I mispronounce Krug in the video. I looked it up afterwards and it is pronounced "kroog" (I haven't heard him say it, so I don't know whether it's "oo like food" or "oo like look".)
See other related StatelessCode videos:
- Why Leave Mistakes in the Videos youtu.be/-9bgFkLaWXY
- Why Stateless Code? playlist youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9kkbu1kLUeO5Htd6ZHJVZO1hrAGkFS1z
Resources that we relied upon for this solution:
- Don't Make Me Think, Revisited by Steve Krug sensible.com/dont-make-me-think
- Rocket Surgery Made Easy sensible.com/rocket-surgery-made-easy
This video is CC0 - No rights reserved. (YouTube doesn't allow this option when publishing.) All code is released under the UNLICENSE. Stateless Code denies the concept of "intellectual property". Copying is not stealing.
Usability is for everybody. It's not some super arcane topic of human inquiry that must be left only to the anointed select few professionals who have "user experience" in their title.
More importantly, everything you design has usability problems that you can fix. Even a back-end system needs to be implemented in a way so that the humans who try to work with it or develop against it are able to do so without frustration or confusion.
A few years ago, a coworker at my day job purchased the book Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug and sent it to me. (Thank you Gurudev!) It has been extremely beneficial for me and was important feedback. Software developers like solving complex problems. Web users want clarity and simplicity. Those two things don't naturally harmonize, so you need to invest the effort to see how you can reduce the cognitive load on your users.
Even if you're the perfect subject matter expert on the topic of your product, you will quickly become blind to the usability issues of it because you are constantly working with it and testing it. When you start actually watching other people use your product, it will be eye-opening and humbling to see them muddle through something that you have spent so much time designing and testing.
But, you'll be able to reflect on what you saw, find the three-ish most important usability issues you can fix with minimal effort and take action. Over time your product will be significantly more usable compared to the status quo. It won't be quite as usable as it would be if you could afford a dedicated professional user experience designer to extensively research every feature. (There aren't enough to go around anyway.) But this is realistic and achievable. Do it.
This video covers:
00:00:12 Introduction
00:01:28 How Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug inspired me
00:01:56 The idea of T-Shaped skills
00:03:06 Don't be afraid to start off by doing something badly. Always be a noob at something
00:04:53 Why you should prioritize user experience research as a skill to develop
00:08:20 Everything has a usability component (even back-end) and there is no shortage of examples of bad usability
00:09:13 Even if you are a subject matter expert, you still want to test with other users because people are different
00:09:56 There is no shortage of low hanging fruit from a usability standpoint in your project
#screencast #agile #softwaredevelopment #learntocode #uxd #uxr #userexperienceresearch #usability #stevekrug #simonsinek #startwithwhy #dontmakemethink #notrocketsurgery #wiki #whystatelesscode
Note: I mispronounce Krug in the video. I looked it up afterwards and it is pronounced "kroog" (I haven't heard him say it, so I don't know whether it's "oo like food" or "oo like look".)
See other related StatelessCode videos:
- Why Leave Mistakes in the Videos youtu.be/-9bgFkLaWXY
- Why Stateless Code? playlist youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9kkbu1kLUeO5Htd6ZHJVZO1hrAGkFS1z
Resources that we relied upon for this solution:
- Don't Make Me Think, Revisited by Steve Krug sensible.com/dont-make-me-think
- Rocket Surgery Made Easy sensible.com/rocket-surgery-made-easy
This video is CC0 - No rights reserved. (YouTube doesn't allow this option when publishing.) All code is released under the UNLICENSE. Stateless Code denies the concept of "intellectual property". Copying is not stealing.
