[Sigia-l] Usability Testing comments from Giga

[joe]

Hi all,

Welcome back to those sitffs lucky enough to have been in Portland for the IA Summit. You suck! (just kidding, of course. Quite jealous, actually). I know some of you have or do engage in usability testing...either formative or summative or a combination. You might be interested in a recent article from Giga Research. They recently opined on the issue. In short, they feel heuristic/expert review and guideline following are to be followed, rather than the collection of observed data--here's the summary:
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Results from usability testing done by Giga’s Web Site Effectiveness Team, as well as usability tests from other sources, show that the majority of Web site issues uncovered also would have been identified using a comprehensive normative screening process. In these cases, the usability testing was a more expensive way to confirm what was already known and for a much more limited portion of the Web site.
Usability testing is most useful after normative testing has uncovered the deviations, it can:
1.        Provide direct customer data to support the process of gaining internal agreement for making specific changes to the site
2.        Check whether specific norms apply to a specific audience 
3.        Test key visitor goal scenarios for unanticipated (unknown) barriers
By placing usability testing in the context of understanding or augmenting normative results, the scope (and cost) can be limited by using the normative knowledge to target the tests and interpret the results.
The situation to avoid is an expensive usability test to discover what is already known. This is why it is important to understand where normative deviations exist first and to fix them (at least where they will be encountered in the usability testing scenarios) before conducting usability tests.
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Thoughts?

joe