In my last post I advised that my pending UXmatters.com article would be covering the topic of whether designers can usability test their own designs. The article is now available here. In it I presented feedback from several people about the wisdom of testing one’s own designs, and generated some recommendations for how to do it well if you find yourself in the position of having to test one’s own design.
Quoting myself:
When testing your own designs,? always concentrate on the negative.
To focus on the negative aspects of your design, try to keep yourself focused on your long-term goal, which is to solve your users’ problems.
I also discussed how to recognize when your design should be scrapped instead of modified:
If your users are unable to grasp the task at hand or are experiencing repeated failures and missteps when navigating your design, you should consider? rethinking the entire design.
Hopefully you’ll find this article useful. Also, the comments in my previous UsabilityBlog post are very instructive. Have a look.? Here’s another link to them.
