If you have a website, or have any creative input into a website, this is a book that is a must read. When people come to your website, they are looking for something. And the number one lesson is don’t make them think, make it obvious.
Through repeated examples, Krug will show you sites that look nice, but that completely confuse their users, and how he would correct them. You will immediately want to redo your site navigation after reading this. And you’ll have a much cleaner overall look once you are done.
Buy this book, read it, and make your little corner of the inter webs a better place.
It's always more complicated 
Do you believe in exceptional cases where it may be worthwhile to get the user to think about the UI? Should it always be as transparent as possible?
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That’s an interesting question, and I hadn’t thought about that. Do you have an example of something you can think of in that area? The only thing that comes to mind is some sort of gamification, but even in those examples the desire is still to be as clear as possible, but to help the user, via game play, through complex learning.
I’d love to hear any idea you had here about times you’d want to make things less clear.
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The one example that comes to mind no longer exists. saulwilliams.com used to have a strange and dark Wonderland-like interface with dancing pages and all sorts of stuff. This may not have been good for business, because they changed it, but it was a neat experience that gave me the same feeling I had when I listened to his last few albums for the first time.
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I try to remember that, as hard as it is to trust, just because there isn’t a ready example, that doesn’t mean the exception is impossible. I guess I wonder whether there are less conventional interpretations of what it means to “help the user”. Usually we mean this to say “get at the content they want as fast and as simply as possible”. That’s a damn good goal, but might there be another? I suppose that’s what you are getting at too, since you mention complex learning and gameplay.
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