Discount usability engineering is a phrase
popularized by Jakob Nielsen, a long-time proponent of smaller,
cheaper usability studies for projects with small budgets for usability.
Nielsen explores the potential cost-savings in detail at http://www.useit.com/papers/guerrilla_hci.html
The primary characteristics of discount usability engineering are
small sample sizes (i.e., fewer participants), frequent iterations
of these small tests, and reliance on direct observations rather
than on statistically established findings. Discount usability engineering
is best suited to projects that have access to an in-house staff
of usability specialists. A prerequisite for discount usability
engineering is the capability to quickly incorporate the results
of each small study into a subsequent iteration of the prototype
which will be tested again. Likewise, it's necessary to be able
to define test tasks quickly and perform the testing in a short
timeframe. These short turn-around cycles are easiest to perform
when all the developers and experimenters involved work for the
same company and have an established pattern of working together.
The limitations of discount usability engineering
are the lack of certainty that its conclusions are correct and its
inability to correlate difference among participants' personal characteristics
with differences in how they behave. Discount usability engineering
is not advisable if you must know for certain how usable your product
is, or if you must be able to predict user needs and problems on
the basis of the users' personal characteristics.
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