

Relentlessly focus on your customers: test usability. - jgershen
http://www.gazehawk.com/blog/relentlessly-focus-on-your-customers-test-usability/

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asolove
I would like to preempt the inevitable "but Apple doesn't do user testing"
argument by saying something.

There are two known ways to make good products.

One is to hire a large team of excellent designers and design managers,
relentlessly design multiple alternatives for every single option, and have
many layers of design review all the way to the executive level. Continuously
kill off all ideas that are not perfect, and all features that you don't have
time to do perfectly. Have your designers and executives use the products
realistically for long periods of time before release to identify problem
areas. If you are willing to do this, feel free to not do usability testing.

On the other hand, if you have to get to market quickly, if some of your
features are sometimes half thought-through, if your design department is so
backlogged you're lucky to get even one thoughtful comp for the current
engineering work, you had damn well better do usability testing.

These are the two choices. You should not expect to design everything once,
build it once, not do user testing, and then blame your crappy product on the
meme that "Apple doesn't do user testing."

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nchlswu
I definitely agree with what you're saying. However, I'd really like to know
the origins of the "Apple doesn't do User Testing"

Has that ever been substantiated? I've heard it once or twice in various
incarnations, such as "Apple doesn't do Market Research" or something of the
like. I really don't think it's reasonable to say that. Apple may not do end
user testing,but I'm sure they do usability testing. It may be a trivial
distinction to some, but I think it's sort of important.

~~~
bugsy
My understanding is "they don't do usability testing" is in the context of
"usability testing" being defined as hiring some usability consultants who
have never designed usable software to come in and video tape random people
off the street trying to accomplish canned tasks using the software. They then
write the results in a report with some generic or impractical suggestions
which would not actually improve usability because they are neither designers
nor target users. Apple doesn't do that sort of "usability testing". However,
Apple does test their products for usability.

