When Not to Test

Following are some rather vague, inappropriate reasons for usability testing a product. These are rarely placed on paper but are usually communicated via word of mouth. They are not sound reasons for testing, and invariably they often come back to sabotage the project.
- You can improve the user experience (you may be able to test one part of the customer experience but not all the touch poir.ts your company has with customers).
» Everyone else has a usability testing program (everyone else has many things). 1
- The meeting rooms used for testing are available the third week of the month (so is the cafeteria every evening).
- Lou just went to the latest ACM SIGCHI (Associadon for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction) conference and learned about this really neat testing technique (let Lou
promote the technique's benefits to the organization first).
■ You want to see if there is a need for this type of product in the marketplace (backwards logic; a focus group or survey is a more appropriate technique early on).You might say to yourself, especially if you are eiger to begin usability testing, "As long as we test, I don't care what the reasons are. We'll worry about the consequences later." And for the short tern, there is no problem with any of the reasons stated previously. However, in the long term, if You want testing yo become an integral part of he wat tour organization develops products tou must yie testing to the neeed of the product and to the organizations business nedds.