The Myth of Usability Testing

“Usability Testing: It’s not a Myth”, a reply from Lukas Mathis: <a href="http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/10/20/usability_testing_not_a_myth/" rel="nofollow">http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2009/10/20/usability_testing_n...</a>

There's a lot of good advice there about asking the right questions of the right people, but I don't think it is fair to assert that because different teams came up with different problems the usablity tests were a failure. Consider the possiblity that each did really did uncover unique serious problems. The goal of UX testing shouldn't be to identify all the problems but some of the serious ones. Test, change and iterate. Once you've addressed a few of the top issues the context of the application has changed anyway.<p>(Also, I wish there was more detail on the individual tests. This sounds like an interesting experiment.)

Maybe the user interfaces totally sucked, and the teams only had time to uncover and report on a percentage of them. Having seen the old Hotmail webpage, I think this is likely.

<i>Contrary to claims that usability professionals operate scientifically to identify problems in an interface</i><p>Who claims that? I think usability testing is one of the most subjective practices out there.<p>Oh right, the author of this article (and the authors of the previous studies too!) is muddying the waters of what is "usability testing" and "usability evaluation".<p>Usability testing normally implies testing with a user. This sounds like all these studies were heuristic evaluations. If everyone had the same set of heuristics/best practices, then yes, it would be surprising for there to be a difference.

This is precisely why Gladwell's books are dangerous. He may say that he wants to inspire people to learn and think more, but he uses sloppy methods.<p>In this blog post, the writer uses Gladwell's shaky arguments to support their own ideas.