Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug. Chapters 1-6

A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

Chapters 1 through 6

Chapter 1: Don’t Make Me Think. (PG 11)
First Law of Usability: Don’t Make Me Think.
This refers to the content on a web page. A good page should not make you think. I you find yourself asking questions about the site, then you are thinking. Example button designs, confusing text and layout design.

Chapter 2: How We Really Use the Web
Fact of Life #1: We don’t read pages, we scan them. (PG 22)
Fact of Life #2: We don’t make optimal choices. We satisfice.
Fact of Life #3: We don’t figure out how things work. We muddle through.

Chapter 3: Billboard Design 101
Design pages for scanning, not reading (pg 30)
Make it obvious what is clickable (pg 37)
Avoid busyness

Chapter 4: Animal, Vegetable or Mineral?
Second Law of Usability: It doesn’t matter how many times I have to click, as long as each click is a mindless, unambiguous choice.

Chapter 5: Omit Needless Words
Third Law of Usability: Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half that’s left.
This is exactly what Megan was talking about for our videoconferencing site!
Benefits of the Third Law: (pg 45)
- It reduces the noise level of the page
- It makes the useful content more prominent
- It makes the pages shorter, allowing users to see more of each page at a glance without scrolling.
Avoid Happy Talk: Too much introduction text and self congratulatory information (pg 46)
Instructions Must DIE! Eliminate instructions entirely by making everything self-explanatory (pg 47).

Chapter 6: Street Signs and Breadcrumbs
Some people will always look for a Search box in a site right away. They are called Search Dominate.
Some people will always browse first. They are called Link Dominate (pg 54).
The overlooked purposes of the Navigator (pg 59)
- It gives us something to hold onto
- It tells us what’s here
- It tells us how to use the site
- It gives us confidence in the people who built it
Persistent Navigation: A set of navigational elements that appears on every page. 2 exceptions: the Home page and forms. (pg 62)
The Sections: Primary Navigation
The Utilities: Such as Home, Search, How to buy or Help
A Way to Search: Use a simple search box with a Search button. No fancy wording (pg 67).
Search options: This site or the web.
Keep it Simple.
Question for Megan: Can we make our Search field be set up to search only our web content?
Page Naming: The name of the page needs to be prominent. The name needs to match what I clicked.
You are here indicators: Highlight current location in navigation bar. Note: too bad Case’s templates can’t do this (pg 74)
Breadcrumbs: You are here indicators. Show an actual path as to how you arrived. About.com is a good example (pg 76).
Tabs for navigating:
- They are self evident
- They are hard to miss
- They are slick
- They suggest a physical space

More to my review of Don’t Make Me Think to come.

Setting up iTunesU albums for Case’s Courseware

We will have a Google Doc created for the current semesters courseware classes (spring 2010). Open or create this document.

Open Case’s Registrar page and search on a course that we will be creating an album for. We will copy data from here and paste it into our Google Doc.

The information we will need is for the following categories: Courseware Name, Course Registration Number (CRN), days of the week that the class takes place, the time of the class, location (building and room number), faculty name, faculty Case ID, title of the class, description of the class and then a Special CRN ID (more on obtaining this later in this document).

Perform a Google search on the title of the class to find and image that could represent the class. The dimension of the album art is 300 x 300 pixels at 72 ppi. The image that we are searching for has to be larger than the 300 x 300 album size.

Create the album art in Photoshop using one of our templates. The logo should be locked in order to keep its location consistent. Once the image is in place and the title of the class added, save as a PSD then as a JPG. iTunes will not accept PSD files and will lock up the iTunes “Upload Artwork” page.

Launch iTunesU and login. Open the correct semester folder. Select “Edit Page”. Click on the “Create Page” tab. Select from template “Default Course”. Scroll down to find the new page setup. There are three fields to fill out. The first is for the name of the course (ex: CHEM 106). The second field is for a short version of the course (ex: chem106). The third field is for an
Identifier Number, which will fill out later. For now leave it blank.

To close this information fields just click on the “Checkmark”. ITunes will return to the current semester folder and automatically alphabetize the classes. You may have to scroll down to find the new class. The class will have a default blank image.

Click on this image and the album page will open. Click on “Edit Page”. To add the new image, click on the “Up Arrow” on the blank image. This will open a browser page to “Upload Artwork”. Use the Browse button to upload the image for the album. Once the image is loaded, scroll down and click on the “Done” button. You will be taken back to the Class page.

There are two areas for information. To the right of the image is a field for the professor’s name. To enter the text just click on the “Pencil” icon. To close out after entering the text click on the “Checkmark”.

To enter a Description, click on the “Pencil” icon next to Description and copy and paste the text from the Google doc. When finished close it out with the “Checkmark”.

Now we must create an audio tab. Most of our iTunes will be audio only. There are occasions that a video tab may need to be created. For now we will create just an audio tab. By default there are two tabs. Remove one of the two by clicking on the “No” symbol. Then double click the remaining tab and type in “Audio”, then close it by the “Checkmark”.

While remaining in Editing Mode, minimize iTunes a bit. Open another browser window and place it behind the iTunes page so we can see the URL area. We will extract the iTunes Album ID.

* Left Click and hold on the Audio tab and drag it onto the Browser URL area (Firefox) or onto the IE8 top browser bar and release. IE8 will ask for approval.

* A URL will be generated. There will be a long set up numbers at the end of the URL. Copy this number (ex: .3111568770.03111568773). The first period must be included.

* This will be the Extracted ID number for that Album.

* Copy that number onto the Google Doc for our current Semester under the heading “iTunes Album ID”.

We are finished setting up the course album page. Return to the current Semester page in iTunes.

We will now have to extract a Special CRN ID for our class. First we must launch MediaVision’s Courseware home page. Login with our Case ID and password. Using the pull down menu, find the current class and open it. Then look for the current video. Scroll down select “Tools and Settings”. Find “What is the direct link to this class”. Double click on the link and cursor to the
far right. There will be a nine digit number that starts with 2 zeros (ex: 001652101). This will be our Special CRN code. Copy the entire number including the zeros and paste it into our Google doc under the heading Special CRN.

Return to the Case iTunes U site. Inside the current semester folder, find the Class that we just created. Click on the Pencil icon. Under the Identifier field, copy in the Special CRN code. This will point to our audio file.

Well, that’s about it folks.

DJ

Capturing Courseware Tape Jobs

- Find course tape and take note of the class name and date it was recorded.

- Create a Sub-folder in the Spring 2010 Tapejobs Desktop

- Name the folder with the class name/number of tape and date (eg: NURS316_1-28-10_Tape-1-of-3)

- Insert video tape into tape deck.

- Rewind the tape to the beginning and double-check the date.

- Press "Play".

- Launch QuickTime Pro.

- Go to "File -> New Movie Record". The video should display momentarily. (NOTE: Do not click the red "record" button yet).

- After establishing the video signal, STOP the tape and rewind to the beginning.

- Hit "Play" on the tape and then click on "Record" on QuickTime (there may not be enough time to hit play and then run back to the computer to hit record so you may need to have someone hit the tape "Play" button for you).

- When the tape runs out, the recording should stop on its own. Since these tapes are reused the recording should stop at the end of the current video. However sometimes it does not. QuickTime will show an error pertaining to an "incorrect media selection".

- The movie file will appear on the desktop as "Movie.mov" If there is already a "Movie.mov," the filenames will become "Movie1.mov, Movie2.mov" and so on.

- Re-Name the file for the class without using any spaces, symbols or extra characters (eg. NURS316).

- Move this file to the "Spring 2010 Tape Job" folder and place it in the Subfolder named for the class in Step 1 (eg: NURS316_1-28-10_Tape-1-of-3).

- Open the movie file to test it for quality (sound, image quality, any glitches and if the movie plays to the end).

- "Drop" the correctly named MOV file to a watch folder on the desktop "watchfolders -> inbox -> mediavision -> video -> vbrick -> part#" There are multiple folders labeled part. Select one that does not have a file with the same name (two files named NURS316 cannot reside in the same "part").





Troubleshooting

- Is the deck connected to the computer via Firewire?
- Error: "incorrect media selection" usually means that there was either a "hit" in the tape (a break in the timecode) that causes the recording to stop. This will usually happen at the end of the class, causing the recording to stop at an appropriate place, but will occasionally happen earlier in the recording. If this happens anywhere except the end of a class, make a new recordings as necessary until the full class is captured.
-If the recording goes past the end of the current class, the extraneous video will need to be excised. This can be done using QuickTime's "IN and OUT" editing controls.
Scrub to the beginning of the unwanted section and hit the Key "I" to set the In.
Scrub to the end of the unwanted section and hit the Key "O" to set the Out.
Go to "Edit -> "Cut."
Go to "File -> "Save As"
Save to the "Semester Year Tape Jobs" (Spring 2010 Tape Jobs) on the Desktop in the subfolder created for the class in Step 1 of the process.
*Other Key Quicktime Controls are J=backwards, K=Pause, L=forwards and Space Bar=Play and Pause.