Chapter 9. Usability testing on 10 cents a day

KEEPING TESTING SIMPLE—SO YOU DO ENOUGH OF IT

Why didn’t we do this sooner?

—WHAT EVERYONE SAYS AT SOME POINT DURING THE FIRST USABILITY TEST OF THEIR WEB SITE

I used to get a lot of phone calls like this:

Voice from a speaker phone says, “Ed Grimley at XYZ Corp gave me your name. We’re launching our site in two weeks and we want to do some usability testing.” A man listening to it thinks, “…two weeks?”

As soon as I’d hear “launching in two weeks” (or even “two months”) and “usability testing” in the same sentence, I’d start to get that old fireman-headed-into-the-burning-chemical-factory feeling, because I had a pretty good idea of what was going on.

If it was two weeks, then it was almost certainly a request for a disaster check. The launch was fast approaching and everyone was getting nervous, ...

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