[Sigia-l] Discount vs. High End testing

[Fred Beecher]

On 8/1/06, Kenneth Bryson <kbryson at toronto.ca> wrote:
>
> I'm planning usability testing for a government website redesign, ie.
> modified Information Architecture, interaction design, and navigation
> scheme.   My plan is to use various discount usability techniques to get
> through this in an effective and efficient manner, including card sorts,
> paper prototyping, lo-fi online prototyping, use cases, etc.

That's a great plan. Usability testing can get ponderous, but it
doesn't need to be. It seems like what you're doing is to do some
research, then a little bit of design, then limited discount testing
on what you've designed, then continuing on to iterate design and
testing... is that accurate? If so, that's a really good way to go. It
keeps things lean and focused and goes a long way to assure that your
site is usable for your intended audience.

A more comprehensive test (by which I only mean you're testing the
site as a whole) would still be recommended at the end of design
though, just to make sure.

Hope that helps,
Fred