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Instead of reading books, why not organize weekly Friday user afternoons: invite three users to use your product. Or a competing product if yours is not ready.
by petervandijck 16y ago
Instead of reading books, why not organize weekly Friday user afternoons: invite three users to use your product. Or a competing product if yours is not ready. Every freaking Friday. Invite the team, too, with pizza and beers.
Better than any book.
- inetsee 16y agoThere are actually a couple of books that can probably help with this kind of informal user experience testing. Both are by Steve Krug. The first is "Don't Make Me Think" which focuses on design for usability, and includes a chapter titled "Usability Testing on 10 Cents a Day". The second is "Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems" (already mentioned by petervandijck). This is a newer book (2009) that goes much more deeply into usability testing for people whose primary responsibility is design and development rather than user experience. It's a great book in spite of the cutesy name.
- vitovito 16y agoI think you need an understanding of the basics before you can start to evaluate why users are doing what they do and how to fix problems they have. The rest of the emails I've sent out recently do recommend that next, though. I just think you need the fundamentals, first!