Relentlessly focus on your customers: test usability.

Relentlessly focus on your customers: test usability.(gazehawk.com)

21 points by jgershen 14 years ago | 5 comments

asolove 14 years ago |

I would like to preempt the inevitable "but Apple doesn't do user testing" argument by saying something.

There are two known ways to make good products.

One is to hire a large team of excellent designers and design managers, relentlessly design multiple alternatives for every single option, and have many layers of design review all the way to the executive level. Continuously kill off all ideas that are not perfect, and all features that you don't have time to do perfectly. Have your designers and executives use the products realistically for long periods of time before release to identify problem areas. If you are willing to do this, feel free to not do usability testing.

On the other hand, if you have to get to market quickly, if some of your features are sometimes half thought-through, if your design department is so backlogged you're lucky to get even one thoughtful comp for the current engineering work, you had damn well better do usability testing.

These are the two choices. You should not expect to design everything once, build it once, not do user testing, and then blame your crappy product on the meme that "Apple doesn't do user testing."

lbarrow 14 years ago | |

' You should not expect to design everything once, build it once, not do user testing, and then blame your crappy product on the meme that "Apple doesn't do user testing." '

I couldn't have said it better myself. I thought about talking about Apple in the blog post, but ultimately decided that it was a bit too complicated and a bit too distracting to address in the post.

But my views align with yours: Apple is not the default result of a company that de-emphasizes usability testing.

nchlswu 14 years ago | |

I definitely agree with what you're saying. However, I'd really like to know the origins of the "Apple doesn't do User Testing"

Has that ever been substantiated? I've heard it once or twice in various incarnations, such as "Apple doesn't do Market Research" or something of the like. I really don't think it's reasonable to say that. Apple may not do end user testing,but I'm sure they do usability testing. It may be a trivial distinction to some, but I think it's sort of important.

bugsy 14 years ago | | |

My understanding is "they don't do usability testing" is in the context of "usability testing" being defined as hiring some usability consultants who have never designed usable software to come in and video tape random people off the street trying to accomplish canned tasks using the software. They then write the results in a report with some generic or impractical suggestions which would not actually improve usability because they are neither designers nor target users. Apple doesn't do that sort of "usability testing". However, Apple does test their products for usability.

bugsy 14 years ago | |

Good point to bring up. Regarding "Have your designers and executives use the products realistically for long periods of time before release to identify problem areas", that's a form of user testing as well when the products are things that people in the company actually use.