Jared M. Spool thinks that ad-hoc usability testing in any space or lab-less testing is in fashion: “More and more, we’re seeing clients conducting ad-hoc testing in any space they find. In our own work, we’re doing the same, rarely taking advantage of labs when they are easily available, just because we don’t need the distractions. As a result, we’ve seen our testing become far more effective at the getting the teams the information they need.”
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“While studying successful projects over the years, we’ve found that usability testing can often be more effective when the team eliminates the lab from the process.
The most successful teams conduct usability tests to help them make informed design decisions. You can tell a testing project has succeeded when the designers have the necessary information to resolve the pending choices they face. Anything slowing down or obfuscating this information gets in the way of the design process.
We’ve found that putting users in front of the team turns out to be the top priority of the seasoned usability professional. In a successful testing process, they optimize everything to ensure that team members have direct access to the users.”
