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Saturday 11:30 a.m.–noon

Usability Testing on the Cheap

Katie Cunningham

Audience level:
Novice
Category:
Best Practices & Patterns

Description

While everyone agrees that usability testing should be an important part of your development process, not everyone has enough money laying around to pay for a dedicated team or consultants. In this talk, Katie will review a number of inexpensive options that can help any team deliver a usable product.

Abstract

While everyone agrees that usability testing should be an important part of your development process, not everyone has enough money laying around to pay for a dedicated team or consultants. In this talk, Katie will review a number of inexpensive options that can help any team deliver a usable product. The purpose of this talk is not to demeen the field of usability experts (if you have the money, you should hire some!), but to help those who are working on a shoe-string budget make better websites. Not every team can afford weeks (and sometimes months) of focused user surveys and specialized observation, but most can afford a pack of index cards and a few pieces of inexpensive software. The audience will walk away not only with an idea of why they might want to do usability testing, but also how they can run a few small-scale studies themselves. These will help them pick the right design, organize their site in a logical manner, and tweak their application as time goes on and their needs change.
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