Two interesting testing links.
photo by phil_g
Here’s a great article about Meetup’s Dead Simple User Testing. What I find really interesting about the article is the attitude that testing should be more than something that’s done once before a release. Rather, it should be something that’s integrated as an ongoing activity:
This goal is to look for obvious improvements continuously, rather than running outsourced, large-N testing every eighteen months. As important, these tests turn into live task lists, not archived reports.
At the end of the article is a link to Why You Only Need to Test With 5 Users, which is also worth reading. The initial paragraph is an excellent hook:
Some people think that usability is very costly and complex and that user tests should be reserved for the rare web design project with a huge budget and a lavish time schedule. Not true. Elaborate usability tests are a waste of resources. The best results come from testing no more than 5 users and running as many small tests as you can afford.
