daily meta

Published in A List Apart, 2009-10-06 Highlights:

Every time a person has a great experience with a website, a web app, a gadget, or a service, it’s because a design team made excellent decisions about both design and implementation—decisions based on data about how people use designs. And how can you get that data? Usability testing.
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Focusing on the behavior you’re interested in observing is easier than trying to select for market segmentation or demographics… don’t make recruiting harder than it has to be.
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At the end of each session, be sure to take a step back with the participant and ask, “How’d that go?”
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[T]he most effective input for informed design decisions is data about the behavior and performance of people using a design to reach their own goals.