kiss of death, or ... is it life?

hmmmm.

what do project managers have against usability testing? what makes them think that usability testing is the "kiss of death" for their precious project timelines? After all, they all buy into the importance of the user (lip service at least) in determining the acceptability of the product or application that they are in charge of bringing to life.

Mention "testing" and they are all smiles. but couple "usability" with that and watch 'em cringe... and turn pale. ever wonder why? have we not made it clear to project managers and other team members what usability is all about?

Perhaps it's because they view usability testing as a unsurmountable pass/fail barrier that they would rather walk around than face?

Perhaps it's because of the aura of mystery surrounding the arcane art of Usability - "Lab" and human evaluators may recall their deep seated childhood fears of being stuffed into a test tube or whatever. Does 'Usability Lab' conjure up images of silent white coated men and women in horn rimmed glasses peering and poking at helplessly strapped down subjects?

Is it because we have ourselves have abandoned the concept of iterative design and exploratory testing? have we fallen into the habit of not having our own work evaluated by peers on a continuous basis so project managers and others can see usability testing as one more review and validation in a long series of evaluations?

are we spending too much time in the process of planning, analyzing, designing, prototyping and documentation - so much, in fact, that the powers that be are appalled at how much time and budget the whole UI design process is costing them in contrast to the time and budgets allocated to other team members.

listen up.. if you enter a project with a huge amount of baggage (ie, inflexible processes), be prepared to meet extreme resistance - DO NOT make grandiose statements about all the steps and deliverables in whatever process you may follow to design - talk to your team members first, and ascertain what it is that the project needs from you, before making your demands - and be reasonable. If you want the team to be cooperative and flexible, you have to be prepared to be too.

Trust me, your users will thank you for giving them a nice interface and an even better engine (code and databases) that actually makes it go.

so.. provide your team with multiple opportunities to evaluate, carry out 'desktop' usability at every opportunity - after all, they are used to testing - and they expect to do "unit" testing before they do "integration" testing - one shot usability tests are terrifying... for anyone.

mini-usability tests, anyone?
____________________________________________________ copyright 2004 ajoy muralidhar. all names or brands referenced are the copyright of their respective owners.