Usability Testing: the secret sauce of startups

&#62; Testing Mobile Apps On Drunks<p>I've done this before. Not a mobile app but a unit of hardware that is at bars (think those digital jukeboxes). During the final stages of testing we mounted one at a friend's place and set it to debug mode (so anything with a magnetic strip passed as being a valid credit card).<p>After a few hours of drinking and watching friends we uncovered some interesting usability concerns. The only problem was we never designated someone as a sober-recorder so the notes were almost entirely useless.

Interesting article and very relevant since I've been conducting bi-weekly usability testing sessions. I've had a lot of success using IamExec.com to find participants for one-hour loosely scripted sessions.<p>Some feedback: It's hard to tell what's a link as the purple really blends in with the black. The dichotomy between "newbie's" and non-newbie's is a bit of a turn-off and could have been more fluidly discussed.

Wouldn't completing a list of goals contradict "not ask leading questions"? Why not just give the app to the user and tell him/her to do his job with it? Instead of telling him what to do.<p>In the end, the app is supposed to help him accomplish what they want, not what you want them to do.

What are some of the tools you use to synthesize the learning from the usability testing?