Ultra Discounted Usability Methods

In the inaugural issue of the Journal of Usability Studies is a short article by Jakob Nielsen entitled Usability for the Masses in which Nielsen suggests that usability needs to packaged "so that it can be fruitfully applied by swarming masses of part-timers."

His logic goes like this:

1. There are 100x more websites than there are usability professionals.
2. Most websites are designed according to the designer's taste with little or no usability testing.
3. Websites are 2x as successful (often measured in sales) if usability testing is done.

Conclusion:

• Extend the work on discount usability engineering to create ultra-discounted methods

In other words, rather than trying to ramp up the number of usability professionals to one million (from the current 10,000), bring usability testing to the masses by developing specific usability guidelines that are easy for practioners to apply. Until usability is easy, quick, and cheap, most companies will continue to avoid it.

Nielsen is absolutely right. People are not doing usability testing and it is because its too dang hard and ridiculously expensive. I recently tried to hire a usability professional for a website project and was told that she wouldn't be available to do the job for three months (proving there not enough usability professionals) and that it would then take at least a month to do the work and would cost my client at least $20,000. The entire project for the website was budgeted for $20,000. So guess what? No usability testing.

Nielsen puts out this call to usability professionals and researchers of the world:

Usability needs to be simplfied even more and made even more actionable. There is a full research agenda here, and we better get started finding the answers, because it is already too late.

Amen.