
Why you only need to test with five users - nreece
http://www.measuringusability.com/five-users.php
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JacobAldridge
Better still, make sure those five users are all familiar with the product,
use exactly the same IT set-up, and are so alike in socio-economic and
personal history terms that they could probably swap girlfriends without the
girls really noticing much.

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harrybr
Exactly - users aren't homogeneous. Neither are UIs - which are often meant to
be used by different types of user group.

You'll notice the author massively caveats his article near the end, stating
"The best strategy is to bring in some set of users, find the problems they
have, fix those problems, then bring in another set of users as part of an
iterative design and test strategy. In the end, although you're never testing
more than 5 users at a time, in total you might test 15 or 20 users."

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cubicle67
The assumption here seems to be that each user will be using the application
in a random manner, deciding which link to click much like tossing a coin.
What's more likely to happen is that all 5 users follow almost the exact same
path.

