What are your best usability testing tips? I need quick & cheap.
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While aimed at web design, Steve Krug’s excellent ‘Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach To Web Usability‘ features (in the second edition, at least), a great chapter entitled ‘Usability Testing On 10 Cents A Day’, which I think is applicable to a much wider range of platforms.
The chapter specifically deals with usability testing done quick and dirty, in a low-budget (no money and/or no time) environment, and illustrates some of the most important considerations for getting an initial ‘feel’ of the thing.
Some of the points I like in particular are:
Joel Spolsky is known for advocating ‘hallway usability testing‘, where you grab a few passing users and ask them to complete some simple task. Partly inspired by the ‘a few users yield the bulk of the results’ philosophy, it’s also relatively convenient and inexpensive, and can be done every so often.