Designed for Use

Takeaway Points

• If you’ve never done any usability tests, start by doing a few traditional, in-person usability tests. You can ask your friends to act as testers until you’re comfortable running tests.

• Once you have a pretty good feel for how to run usability tests, move on to remote testing.

• Try to do at least one remote test every week.

• Recruit testers using your website, as well as other venues such as mailing lists, discussion groups, or even newspapers. Using a website for recruitment is extremely convenient and essentially free, but if you only recruit this way, you may skew your results toward people who already have experience with your products because they’re more likely to visit your website.

• Screen out potential testers who are only ...