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Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing UsabilUy Problems
Steve Krug
Berkeley, California: New Riders, 2009
INTRODUCTION
Rocket Surgery Made Easy is Steve Krug's follow-up companion to his 2000 book Don't Make Me Think, and it details how to find and fix usability issues with your website, application or software. Rocket Surgery Made Easy does an excellent job of positioning itself as a handbook for quick and dirty usability testing, building on the commonsense approach espoused in Krug's earlier offering.
The book is structured in three sections over a series of very short chapters; this review follows a similar path. The initial nine chapters discuss the basic elements of conducting usability tests, the next four detail specific strategies for fixing what is found and the last three chapters are dedicated to emerging technologies, additional recommendations for reading and some useful materials with which to get your team started. The book is aimed both at professional usability people and those managing software teams. However, managers involved in any user-facing application, from mobile applications to the simplest of websites, would find this book a very accessible and practical guide to usability testing. Additionally, if you are planning on engaging a professional usability firm, this is a quick study in the process, practice and terminology of usability testing.
PRAEMONITUS, PRAEMUNITUS
Krug offers a few caveats before truly beginning the handbook. He admits it is not to be taken as a comprehensive addition to the multitude of usability tomes already in existence, though he offers his thoughts on many popular ones in the penultimate chapter. The book is purposefully succinct, undertaking to be readable on a long plane ride. The author carefully addresses a number of arguments that amateurs should not be delving into such important work. However, he does caution that if you can afford professional usability testing you should proceed with it. Finally, he bounds the book's purpose firmly within the realm of simple, informal and small sample usability testing, not to be used for fool-proofing systems but to make them a little easier to use without much fuss. Usability testing is an area of distinct interest to managers that is often ignored. When testing does occur it is often relegated to...