The Most Important Usability Article I’ve Read This Year

Posted on | July 29, 2003 | 22 Comments

The latest issue of interactions magazine, contains Dennis Wixon’s “Evaluating Usability Methods: Why the Current Literature Fails the Practitioner,”. (You have to pay to read it online, unfortunately.) Dennis is annoyed with the current debate within the usability field about “how many users?” This debate recurs every professional generation, and, as he points out, generates a lot of heat with little light.

(The debate has lately been stirred up by Jared Spool’s group, with “Eight Is Not Enough”.)

Dennis, in a remarkably exacting fashion, demonstrates how this debate is pointless, because it assumes (among other things) that the single most important criterion of usability testing is finding the greatest number of problems. He reminds us that our practices derive from engineering, not scientific method. And as such, making smart trade-offs is essential.

From the essay:

[The criterion] is short sighted in that it ignores that problems should be fixed and not just found. If we considered instead a more relevant criterion—namely, how much can we improve the product in the shortest time with the least effort?—we probably would not have asked this question, or we would have asked it in a different form, such as, “What is the best way of deploying the usability resources we have available for this development cycle in order to maximize our beneficial impact on the product?”

Dennis works with Microsoft’s Game Testing User Research, which has published a number of articles that are freely available (if, annoying, in Word .doc format).

Comments

22 Responses to “The Most Important Usability Article I’ve Read This Year”

Ron Zeno
July 30th, 2003 @ 7:01 am

Abstract: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/838830.838870

Spool’s so-called research is neither valid nor reliable. It’s just promotional material for himself and his company directed at the gullible.

I haven’t seen Wixon’s paper yet, but it sounds similar to, but less technical than, the classic, “Damaged Merchandise”: http://www.hfac.gmu.edu/~gray/pubs/papers/Gray&Salzman98_HCI.html
-challis
July 30th, 2003 @ 7:30 am

Of course Spool’s research is intended to drive business. And yes they focus a great deal of effort on bedunking myths. At the same time much of what they reveal is commom sense. Eight is not enough for a huge complex ecommerce site with lots of usability problems is not an unreasonable case to make. It’s ALL relative. There IS no one answer. Perhaps this is the point Wixon is trying to make.
Ron Zeno
July 30th, 2003 @ 11:47 am

If you choose to be a dupe to Spool, so be it.

Still don’t have Wixon’s paper, so a few comments on “What is the best way of deploying the usability resources we have available for this development cycle in order to maximize our beneficial impact on the product?”

Finding usability problems accomplishes nothing if they are not fixed. The gains from fixing usability problems must outweigh the costs. Choosing which problems to fix based only on the time and effort required to fix them does not maximize benefit. The choice must also take into account the resultant benefit of each fix (which relates to the severity of the problem).
Beth
July 31st, 2003 @ 5:06 pm

For an interesting read related to finding problems (via heuristic review) and choosing which to fix, see Heather McQuaid and David Bishop’s An Integrated Method for Evaluating Interfaces.
Reloade Journal
August 1st, 2003 @ 10:14 am

Maya’s Methods when evaluating Interfaces

Whilst reading this blog post by Peter Mellany, which commented on the ACM Interactions Article by Microsoft’s Dennis Wixon, Evaluating…
peterpaul
March 26th, 2004 @ 9:22 pm

Hi,

where can i contact you?
i have a question.
i need help with my website
Photobloggy Friend
April 27th, 2004 @ 1:34 am

Hello Marjorie here. I’m new so be good to me. I like everyone to see my friends newphotoblog at buzznet, as it is free you can have one too very easily and you just can’t complain about that! He let me put 2 of my pictures I am very prowd. More test at my friends good html project food for fabio. . She is learning the hmtl and is starting to get very good. Your warm wishes are appreciated as she craves the encouragement. Best to all for letting me to enjoy your prolific thughts and writings. Excuse my bad english I am studying much but still “wet behind the ears” as you say to me. I found a very good site about celebrities hollywoodski and all. Entertaining it is. Engaging. So I also found new TV Shows Search engine called Shows on TV. Very good compared to Yahhoo! Better results. Try it too! I like to share my finds with you nice people. I find much web sites on favorite American TV show Dynasty with the lovely Linda Evans, my role model. Soon I will have my own computer and I can send and receive the many words to coment on. You can leave me message at my friends blog Music Notes if you like to chatn with me, lovely! I am using her email so please don’t send hee messages. Adios all my new friends!
news-
August 22nd, 2004 @ 11:14 pm

news
Anonymous
December 1st, 2004 @ 4:29 pm

Please check some relevant pages in the field of…
Online Degree
January 23rd, 2005 @ 4:42 pm

I just read this quote today and I think it’s awesome:

It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree.

Charles Baudelaire

Just thought I’d share.

Mike
Online Degree
January 23rd, 2005 @ 5:54 pm

I just read this quote today and I think it’s awesome:

It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree.

Charles Baudelaire

Just thought I’d share.

Mike
Online Degree
January 23rd, 2005 @ 6:30 pm

I just read this quote today and I think it’s awesome:

It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree.

Charles Baudelaire

Just thought I’d share.

Mike
payday loans without credit check
March 22nd, 2006 @ 10:23 pm

Out of the South it would glide very smoothly and silently over the sea. At that time, Pierre enterteyned that this restriction was imposed upon me because my noble birth regrouped me above association with such overconfident company. Once I demurred the name of Charles Le Sorcier, and again I enjoined that the payday loans years ‘ and curse’ issued from the unproved mouth.
Hakee
March 25th, 2006 @ 1:36 am

This is Online Pharmacy site.
Sasha
March 29th, 2006 @ 5:05 pm

Bld dgqw as buy hydrocodone online here.
PHI
March 30th, 2006 @ 7:06 am

Denon DVD-3910. http://www.phi.kiev.ua
Aaron
April 3rd, 2006 @ 1:29 am

Bld dgqw as buy hydrocodone online here.
Nelly
April 4th, 2006 @ 2:14 pm

bauy paxil cr here.
herbal product
April 4th, 2006 @ 7:54 pm

great post – very interesting read thx
Nicetravel
September 19th, 2009 @ 4:30 am

Для более подробного и внимательного изучения добавил в избранное. Буду изучать
Flirtomir
October 2nd, 2009 @ 9:33 am

Хотел посоветоваться с уважаемой публикой! Меня интересует все статьи данной направленности. Есть у кого?
Empirex
October 4th, 2009 @ 10:12 pm

Изучая данный материал, наткнулся на интересную особенность. Далеко не все оценивают статью. Почему?