Chris, There is not any statistical formula or method that will tell you the correct number of people to test. In my experience it depends on the functions you are testing, how many test scenarios you want to run and how many of those can be done by one participant in one session, and how many different levels of expertise you need (e.g. novice, intermediate, and/or expert) to really exercise your application.
I have gotten valuable insight from testing 6-10 people for ecommerce sites with fairly common functionality that people are generally familiar with but have used more for more complex applications where there are different levels of features that some users rely on heavily and others never use. I do believe that any testing is better than none, and realize you are likely limited by time and budget. I think you can usually get fairly effective results with 10 or fewer people. Will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=46278 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
