Usability Testing

For many of us, usability testing is a necessary evil. For others, it’s too much work, or it’s too disruptive to the development process. As you might expect, I have issues with all that. It’s unfortunate that some teams don’t see the value in observing people use their designs. Done well, it can be an amazing event in the life of a design. Even done very informally, it can still show up useful insights that can help a team make informed design decisions. But I probably don’t have to tell you that.

Usability testing can be enormously elevating for teams at all stages of UX maturity. In fact, there probably isn’t nearly enough of it being done. Even on enlightened teams that know about and do usability tests, they’re probably not doing it often enough. There seems to be a correlation between successful user experiences and how often and how much the designers and developers spend time observing users. (hat tip Jared Spool)

Observing people using early designs can be energizing as designers and developers get a chance to see reactions to ideas. I’ve seen teams walk away with insights from observing people use their designs that they couldn’t have got any other way – and then make better designs than they’ve ever made. Close to launch, it is exciting – yes, exciting – to see a design perform as useful, usable, and desirable.