December 31, 2002

Usability Monkeybusiness

D. Keith Robinson publishes an article on Gorilla Usability at Evolt. I think he meant guerrilla rather than gorilla, but don't let that stop you from reading the article. He doesn't cover any new ground: Jakob Nielsen, among others, has been beating on the low-cost usability drum for quite some time--see Nielsen's 1994 article Guerrilla HCI: Using Discount Usability Engineering to Penetrate the Intimidation Barrier. , Robinson's article describes are much more informal methodology than Nielsen's work. Most of the usability testing I've done falls closer to Robinson than Nielsen. Short, quick tests can be quite valuable, especially if they are done at a stage where changes can still be made.

Despite my quibbles over originality, the article is worth a read. Any testing is better than none.