Krug and the Long Tail

I am loving Steve Krug's book Don't Make Me Think, not so much because I don't want to have to think at all when viewing a web page, but because I'm thinking of neophyte web users like the ones in the Beginning Internet courses I teach -- neophytes who, ironically, have a mean age of around 75.

Krug's ideas dovetail (pun intended) with Chris Anderson's notion of The Long Tail. It's often used to refer to sales figures: in short, sales distribution on sites like Amazon typically has a limited number of high-volume-selling items, and a far greater number of items that sell far fewer units. Long Tail theory holds that these lower-volume items actually make up the bulk of total sales.

Web designers should approach the web likewise. Though it's not proven, I would venture that web users' abilities and savvy follow a similar curve: A relative few are very skilled at recognizing and navigating what they want on the web, no matter what web designers may throw at them, while the majority of surfers have a progressively less-sophisticated skill set. Web designers should design, by and large, for this lowest common denominator.

I'm a Krug disciple if there ever was one . . .