My comments are interleaved... Katie Albers [email protected]
On Oct 2, 2009, at 12:42 PM, Thomas Petersen wrote:
I have made this point before. I really don't in general see the usage of testing during the design process.
Well, that's unfortunate.
I see great benefit in testing before starting on the actual design process in order to figure out what kind of problems, issues and tasks users want. But testing usability in an environment that is not final is IMO a waste of both time and money. Only if we are dealing with entire new paradigms do I see any reason to test.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by paradigms in this context. Perhaps you mean a function we've never seen before? In any case, you will generally find that very few users want problems or issues. They want functions. They want to be able to find those functions, and perform them with minimal exertion. And that's why we test.
Most people who call them selves either information architects or UX'ers or designers should be able to deliver their part without needing to involve the users once the problems, tasks and purpose have been established.
Of course, they can, as long as they have the users' input. What appears to be a completely reasonable process, or an obvious button, or a clear name to someone working on the creation of an interface is likely to turn out to be obscure, hard to follow or incomprehensible when you put it in front of actual users. I suspect that everyone who tests throughout the process has had the experience of a test in which the "perfect element" turns out to be something that *none* of the users gets.
It is my claim that you can't really test usability before you launch the final product and that you should factor this in instead. I find the current state of UCD troubling to say the least.
Can you test the usability of the product? no. You don't have a finished product. But you can test all the elements that are going in to the product. If no one notices the critical button on the second step even though your visual designer went to great lengths to position it and color it and so forth, precisely to make it obvious, it's better to know that before you've built an entire product that relies on users pressing that button.
Jakob Nielsen is to me someone to read to get an understanding of users in general. But i just need a look at his website and then look around at other sites and applications to understand that his work as great as it is is only a fraction of the whole story.
Jakob's site is built to highlight Jakob's group's expertise. It does so admirably. To generalize from that very particular example to "what Jakob thinks all sites should be like" is foolish in the extreme.
As for the rest of your statement here: Of course it's only a fraction of the story. But it is a piece of the story. Testing as you go is a central tenet of all aspects of development. Software developers test pieces of their code to make sure they do the right thing. Design engineers test screens to make sure that everything shows up properly and in the correct space. UXers test the aspects and versions of the product to make sure they are producing the desired results.
In each of these cases the goal is the same: It's a lot cheaper to find something wrong on a piece or earlier in the process and correct it then than it is to have to go back and redevelop the whole product to set things right that you should have corrected months ago. It's like building a house on an improperly laid foundation. It's cheaper to fix the foundation alone than it is to fix the whole house.
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