Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web and Mobile Application Design

This second edition of Designing the Obvious explains why and how to design applications that are so easy to use that people attribute their ability to use them effectively to pure common sense.

We need to:

Make decisions based not on whim, but on strategy

Build only what's absolutely necessary

Quickly turn beginning users into intermediates

Prevent errors when possible and gracefully handle those we cannot prevent

Reduce and refine task flows to make the complex clear

Design not for users, but for their situations

Be persuasive by helping users make decisions that align with their needs

Ignore the demands of users and stick to a vision (gasp!)

Robert Hoekman, Jr., is a user experience strategist who has worked with MySpace, Seth Godin (Squidoo), Automattic (WordPress), and countless others, and has spoken at industry events all over the world, including An Event Apart, Web App Summit, and SXSWi.

Robert Hoekman, Jr, is a passionate and outspoken user experience specialist and a prolific writer who has written dozens of articles and has worked with Seth Godin (Squidoo), Adobe, Automattic, United Airlines, DoTheRightThing.com, and countless others.

He also gives in-house training sessions and has spoken at industry events all over the world, including An Event Apart, Web App Summit, SXSW, Future of Web Design, and many others.

Robert is the author of the Amazon bestseller Designing the Obvious and its follow-up, Designing the Moment. His newest book, Web Anatomy, was coauthored by Jared Spool.

Learn more about Robert at rhjr.net. He is "rhjr" on Twitter.