Discount Usability Testing

Abstract

Usability testing need not be costly and time-consuming to be effective. Discount usability testing provides a set of cheap, fast and easy to apply techniques including think aloud, card sorting, walkthroughs, scenarios and heuristic evaluation. These methods can reveal major and minor usability issues in a system at a low cost. Although it is an advantage, evaluators need not be usability experts. These methods can be utilized early in the design cycle or during the implementation phase. In an Agile setting, discount usability testing works effectively because of the iterative nature of this model. Discount methods tend to find superficial problems; thus they usually are not suitable for in-depth usability studies. Discount usability testing is not a replacement of traditional usability testing, but can be very advantageous compared to doing nothing.