Week 15: 3 points and a question

• Krug suggests that it is much better to test a few people several times throughout the design process than to test many people just one time. “Design is an iterative process. Testing isn’t something you do once. You make something, test it, fix it, and test it again” (135). By testing multiple times, the designer is able to see what works and more importantly what doesn’t work, make changes and then test again. Once changes have been made to the original design a second round of testing will likely uncover other issues that the first tests didn’t uncover.
• You should review the results of a usability test as soon after the test as possible.
• In reviewing the problems people saw during a usability test and deciding which problems need to be fixed, Krug offers some guidelines about deciding what to fix and what not to fix. He suggests avoiding “kayak” problems, resisting the impulse to add things where test users had trouble doing/getting something, taking “new feature” requests with a grain of salt, and changing the obvious and easy-to-fix problems.

Question: Can we (and should we) apply these usability testing guidelines to documents other than websites?