Comments on: What’s the point of usability testing? http://www.dancingmango.com/blog/2006/06/28/whats-the-point-of-usability-testing/ For more than a decade Marc has been a passionate advocate of placing the customer at the heart of business, working with clients in finance, retail, government and entertainment sectors, helping them craft compelling cross channel customer experiences. Marc champions lean and agile approaches for making customer driven innovation happen. He brings design thinking and creativity to clients, engaging across the organisation with a focus on delivery as well as ideas. He is currently writing a book on Agile Experience Design to be published this Autumn. Sun, 25 Sep 2011 23:33:07 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9 hourly 1 By: John Gibbard http://www.dancingmango.com/blog/2006/06/28/whats-the-point-of-usability-testing/comment-page-1/#comment-1620 John Gibbard Mon, 10 Jul 2006 16:06:49 +0000 http://www.dancingmango.com/blog/?p=59#comment-1620 All interesting points (otherwise why would I comment?!) but still maintain it's essential to test our work, however well-considered during the design process. There's nothing like a formalised statement with/without recorded video to indicate the issues and successes with a wireframed idea. I do agree, however, that the value of this diminishes depending on how lo-fi the wireframe is and how iterative the design has been to-date (i loved the guerilla testing image). More posts like this please :) All interesting points (otherwise why would I comment?!) but still maintain it’s essential to test our work, however well-considered during the design process. There’s nothing like a formalised statement with/without recorded video to indicate the issues and successes with a wireframed idea. I do agree, however, that the value of this diminishes depending on how lo-fi the wireframe is and how iterative the design has been to-date (i loved the guerilla testing image). More posts like this please :)

]]> By: Martin Dowson http://www.dancingmango.com/blog/2006/06/28/whats-the-point-of-usability-testing/comment-page-1/#comment-1490 Martin Dowson Thu, 29 Jun 2006 08:50:30 +0000 http://www.dancingmango.com/blog/?p=59#comment-1490 I agree wholeheartedly with everything Marc is saying and that Peter has supported (yes there is a but coming) it is true that if you follow a good methodology, have good people on board, have chosen front and back end technology that means you can develop using web-frameworks like Ruby on Rails... in these ideal situations then you will reduce the need to do "usability testing" I for one have moved on from "usability testing" to user experience testing... (whole other posting...) but what of those projects who 1) arent developing on a web-framework... Large corporates developing in-house software solutions 2) have chosen (for good or misguided reasons) out of the box industry solutions such as (and marc will shudder at this...) Chordiant 3) dont have the user-centred design skills in house This is why we still do usability testing, because unfortunately we don't all live or work in a perfect bubble where everyone understands user-centred design. take a look at IT teams these days... especially those in the mgt consultancy market... (again ANOTHER blog topic) Many of us in the usability/user experience profession don't work on $500M, 5 year programmes rolling out software across 3 geographies to 100,000 people... when you do projects like that... agile programming, user-centred design are often very low down on the methodoloy musts... cost-control, cost-accountability are... I see usability testing within large corporates as an educational process for them, the more they go through it the more they learn. Sure it would be great if we could get them to be agile, user centred, persona-led, info arch savvy from day one... but they're not so you end up with stuff that needs to be tested regularly to be brought back on track, with teams that don't get user-centred design because they are in very formal methodologies... usability testing opens their eyes, changes mind sets, helps methodologies morph... I'm getting there eventually with my clients... my ideal is to have them follow more UCD methodologies and eventually not need to test as much... So if you are already a user-centred designer... you probably don't need to do as much usability testing... just cos you don't doesnt mean that there isnt a large need for it in the marketplace! :-) I agree wholeheartedly with everything Marc is saying and that Peter has supported (yes there is a but coming) it is true that if you follow a good methodology, have good people on board, have chosen front and back end technology that means you can develop using web-frameworks like Ruby on Rails… in these ideal situations then you will reduce the need to do “usability testing”

I for one have moved on from “usability testing” to user experience testing… (whole other posting…)

but what of those projects who

1) arent developing on a web-framework… Large corporates developing in-house software solutions
2) have chosen (for good or misguided reasons) out of the box industry solutions such as (and marc will shudder at this…) Chordiant
3) dont have the user-centred design skills in house

This is why we still do usability testing, because unfortunately we don’t all live or work in a perfect bubble where everyone understands user-centred design.

take a look at IT teams these days… especially those in the mgt consultancy market… (again ANOTHER blog topic) Many of us in the usability/user experience profession don’t work on $500M, 5 year programmes rolling out software across 3 geographies to 100,000 people… when you do projects like that… agile programming, user-centred design are often very low down on the methodoloy musts… cost-control, cost-accountability are…

I see usability testing within large corporates as an educational process for them, the more they go through it the more they learn. Sure it would be great if we could get them to be agile, user centred, persona-led, info arch savvy from day one… but they’re not so you end up with stuff that needs to be tested regularly to be brought back on track, with teams that don’t get user-centred design because they are in very formal methodologies… usability testing opens their eyes, changes mind sets, helps methodologies morph… I’m getting there eventually with my clients… my ideal is to have them follow more UCD methodologies and eventually not need to test as much…

So if you are already a user-centred designer… you probably don’t need to do as much usability testing… just cos you don’t doesnt mean that there isnt a large need for it in the marketplace!

:-)

]]> By: Rapid prototyping makes usability testing easier - Peter Krantz http://www.dancingmango.com/blog/2006/06/28/whats-the-point-of-usability-testing/comment-page-1/#comment-1483 Rapid prototyping makes usability testing easier - Peter Krantz Wed, 28 Jun 2006 12:17:18 +0000 http://www.dancingmango.com/blog/?p=59#comment-1483 [...] In an article over at Dancingmango Marc McNeill writes about how new web development frameworks such as Ruby on Rails will have an impact on usability testing practices (“What’s the point of usability testing”). The only real reason to test a mockup instead of a real application is of course that it used to be more expensive and time consuming to create an application. With Rails there is no such barrier anymore and usability tests can (and should) be using the real application instead. It is likely that this will lead to a better understanding of how users behave in e.g. a task based system. [...] [...] In an article over at Dancingmango Marc McNeill writes about how new web development frameworks such as Ruby on Rails will have an impact on usability testing practices (“What’s the point of usability testing”). The only real reason to test a mockup instead of a real application is of course that it used to be more expensive and time consuming to create an application. With Rails there is no such barrier anymore and usability tests can (and should) be using the real application instead. It is likely that this will lead to a better understanding of how users behave in e.g. a task based system. [...]

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