Usability testing

[Patrick Dubroy]

On Sun, Apr 13, 2008 at 3:08 PM, Greg Smith (gregmsmi)
<gregmsmi at cisco.com> wrote:
> Hi Tomeuz et al,
>
>  I have done a few usability tests and they are a lot of work and not
>  easy to turn in to code later.

Many people seem to believe this myth that usability tests are too
much work. But as Jakob Nielsen says:

"Some people think that usability is very costly and complex and that
user tests should be reserved for the rare web design project with a
huge budget and a lavish time schedule. Not true. Elaborate usability
tests are a waste of resources. The best results come from testing no
more than 5 users and running as many small tests as you can afford."

(The whole article is worth a read. "Why You Only Need to Test With 5
Users": http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html)

> [snip]
>
>  The report by Carol's daughter: (see
>  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User_talk:Gregorio#User_experience.2C_input.2C
>  _ideas_and_blogs South Bronx Teacher Feedback link).
>
>  One key idea there is that kids wont wait for an activity to load. The
>  activity icon blinks but the kids didn't get that. Maybe an animated GIF
>  or a mini-animation would help. Or maybe paint the activity window right
>  away, then fill it in slowly. Downside of that is you are tied to
>  activity even if it never loads. Two ideas but we need more user
>  feedback that its important issue before I would suggest it's a
>  development priority.

And that is a perfect example of how informal usability testing can be
done without too much work. I'd love to see more reports "from the
field" like Robin's.

Pat
--
Patrick Dubroy
http://dubroy.com/blog - on programming, usability, and hci