Friday, July 25. 2008
Usability testing on the cheap
It used to be that proper usability testing required a massive capital investment.
Early in my career, I was lucky enough to work for a company that had made that investment. They had a very expensive usability lab with one-way glass between rooms and cameras to record what the user did. It was always a shock to watch someone try to use your software for the first time. Places where you assumed they'd struggle, they'd just breeze through. Other places where you never anticipated problems, they'd get stuck.
The software we built at that company was always better for having been through a round (or sometimes a couple of rounds) of formal usability testing.
Now I see that for a mere $50 and the cost of a Mac, you can get almost all the benefit that we used to get from the full usability lab. Times sure have changed.
Early in my career, I was lucky enough to work for a company that had made that investment. They had a very expensive usability lab with one-way glass between rooms and cameras to record what the user did. It was always a shock to watch someone try to use your software for the first time. Places where you assumed they'd struggle, they'd just breeze through. Other places where you never anticipated problems, they'd get stuck.
The software we built at that company was always better for having been through a round (or sometimes a couple of rounds) of formal usability testing.
Now I see that for a mere $50 and the cost of a Mac, you can get almost all the benefit that we used to get from the full usability lab. Times sure have changed.
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Email: mbowler
@GargoyleSoftware.com
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