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http://www.uie.com/articles/three_hund_million_button
Ehh that is proving my point. That's refinement AFTER launch of the product. That is something entirely different than what that 5USD test is all about.
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shalmanese Amazon do A/B tests. Apple doing usability tests? Not according to those I know there. Don't you mean testing?
Amazon do both A/B testing & usability testing. Apple's own HIG advocates for usability testing: http://developer.apple.com/Mac/library/documentation/UserExp... Do you have a cite that either does not do usability testing?
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_12/b3925608....
This article doesn't cite it but hint's at it.
Which is obvious for a couple of reasons. Apple is paranoid that anything regarding what they work on get's out. and Apple use the Genius design method. Apple do new things not me to products.
Other than that you must take my word for it and those I know at Apple. But again if you can find anything that proves that Apple do usability testing then by all means please share.
With regards to Amazon. I know that what matters at amazon is A/B testing.
http://glinden.blogspot.com/2007/06/ab-testing-at-amazon-and...
And looking at their checkout process it doesn't look like anything that have been anywhere near a usability test.
But you are missing the point here.
The companies didn't become successful because of usability testing that is the crux of the matter and the claim behind the 5USD that is wrong. To the extent it testing your product matters you can ask ANYONE. If it is that bad then why spend 5USD on a beer.
But most likely it wont be totally unusable and then the actual evidence of usability test having any positive influence on your likely success.
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http://www.uie.com/articles/three_hund_million_button
Ehh that is proving my point. That's refinement AFTER launch of the product. That is something entirely different than what that 5USD test is all about.
It just doesn't matter in the beginning.
Show me examples of companies who wouldn't be a success if it wasn't for the usability testing they did up front.
If it's so well proven that should be easy for you.
You are confusing improvements to an established already successful e-commerce company with creating one from scratch.
It's quite obvious if you already have a successful site you can adjust accordingly which is exactly what Amazon do all the time. Because that is what e-commerce sites must do to keep sales up.
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Ehh that is proving my point. That's refinement AFTER launch of the product. That is something entirely different than what that 5USD test is all about.
Of course it can be done a all stages. It just doesn't matter in the beginning. Show me examples of companies who wouldn't be a success if it wasn't for the usability testing they did up front. If it's so well proven that should be easy for you. You are confusing improvements to an established already successful e-commerce company with creating one from scratch. It's quite obvious if you already have a successful sit…
Proving usability testing works when creating a product has the same problem with proving something like agile development works. Every project is unique so you never know how things would have turned out if you did things another way.
The best you're going to get is anecdotal evidence that early stage usability testing caused significant pivots around the core concept and assume that these pivots are generally positive.
Much of the customer development stuff Steve Blank talks about fall into this category.
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Thanks, that's good to know. I know someone once mentioned using Mechanical Turk and that those sometimes ended up being their most loyal users, but I cannot recall the context. Has anyone used these services and what results did you see?
I've tried Feedback Army and was disappointed w/ the results. Not that it isn't a cool idea, but I think the give and take of a good usability test requires that it be done in person. If you watch usability expert Steve Krug doing a demo test ( http://network.businessofsoftware.org/video/steve-krug-on-th... ), you'll see what I mean.
http://www.i-proving.ca/space/David+Jones/blog/2010-01-27_1?...
Then again, Feedback Army is just a usability testing tool. The right one for the job. I think it's best when a breadth of ideas are needed quickly or you need some ideas about where to start improving your site.
You should use other methods to do testing that requires a lot of depth from one or two people.
Here are a few more posts where folks have written up their experiences:
http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/how-an-...
http://www.mattmazur.com/2010/02/reflections-on-precedens-ha...
(p.s. I run Feedback Army :))
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Ehh that is proving my point. That's refinement AFTER launch of the product. That is something entirely different than what that 5USD test is all about.
Of course it can be done a all stages. It just doesn't matter in the beginning. Show me examples of companies who wouldn't be a success if it wasn't for the usability testing they did up front. If it's so well proven that should be easy for you. You are confusing improvements to an established already successful e-commerce company with creating one from scratch. It's quite obvious if you already have a successful sit…
Much of the customer development stuff Steve Blank talks about fall into this category."
In other words. There is no evidence what so ever. Thank you for proving my point.
I have 15 years of anecdotal evidence that there is no correlation between Usability testing and successful products.
And I am still asking you to provide evidence.
Twitter, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, LastFM, 37Signals and so on. None of them to my knowledge did usability testing before they launched their products.
Again you are welcome to prove me wrong. With regards to Steve Blank then I don't think that is what he is saying.
There are however evidence that listening to customers don't help http://entrepreneur.venturebeat.com/2010/02/11/bolt-peters-r...
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Thanks, that's good to know. I know someone once mentioned using Mechanical Turk and that those sometimes ended up being their most loyal users, but I cannot recall the context. Has anyone used these services and what results did you see?
kartme posted a good post about changes they made with usability testing. they mentioned uservoice which is on turk if I remember, they mentioned doing a followup post explaining more about what the did during testing. http://kartme.com/blog/8-usability-lessons-learned-members
I think something our field may benefit from is a guide that explains how to use the different usability services and at what point in the project cycle they should be used.
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Of course it can be done a all stages. It just doesn't matter in the beginning. Show me examples of companies who wouldn't be a success if it wasn't for the usability testing they did up front. If it's so well proven that should be easy for you. You are confusing improvements to an established already successful e-commerce company with creating one from scratch. It's quite obvious if you already have a successful sit…
"The best you're going to get is anecdotal evidence that early stage usability testing caused significant pivots around the core concept and assume that these pivots are generally positive. Much of the customer development stuff Steve Blank talks about fall into this category." In other words. There is no evidence what so ever. Thank you for proving my point. I have 15 years of anecdotal evidence that there is no cor…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
kartme posted a good post about changes they made with usability testing. they mentioned uservoice which is on turk if I remember, they mentioned doing a followup post explaining more about what the did during testing. http://kartme.com/blog/8-usability-lessons-learned-members
I like their approach using a variety of tools at different stages of product development to get the job done. I think something our field may benefit from is a guide that explains how to use the different usability services and at what point in the project cycle they should be used.
Another hack to is to do testing in student centers (as opposed to bars) so you can get people on their own computers.