UIEtips Article: A Counter-Intuitive Approach to Evaluating Design Alternatives

Every week, teams approach us looking to conduct their first usability study. Having spent months (sometimes years) arguing the value of a study with their management, they’ve finally received the necessary approval.

Under the guise of making this study as valuable as possible, these teams make the novice mistake of trying to do too much. Their ambitious approach puts the project in jeopardy. A failed usability study can send a message through the organization that the technique is too expensive and difficult to do well.

In this week’s article for our email newsletter, I talk about a team who wants to evaluate a bunch of design prototypes with their first test, resulting in far more work than they originally realized. Instead, I propose a counter-intuitive way for them to get the necessary feedback without having users compare each alternative.

You can read my article here.

Have you needed to evaluate multiple designs with limited time and budget? What would you have proposed for our clients?

Managing usability studies on a shoestring budget is just one of the great full-day topics we’ll have at the User Interface 13 Conference, this October 13-16, in Cambridge, MA. If you register by Tuesday, May 20, you’ll get a great registration price and a Flip Ultra Video Camera. See UI13 Conference site for more information.