Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited a common Sense Approach to Web Usability Steve Krug

participants. The price tag dropped to $5,000 to $10,000 per round of testing.
The idea of discount usability testing was a huge step forward. The only
problem is that every Web site (and app) needs testing and $5,000 to $10,000
is still a lot of money, so it doesn’t happen nearly often enough.
What I’m going to commend to you in this chapter is something even
simpler (and a lot less expensive): Do-it-yourself usability testing.

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I’m going to explain how you can do your own testing when you have no
time and no money.
Don’t get me wrong: If you can afford to hire a professional to do your
testing, do it. Odds are they’ll be able to do a better job than you can. But if
you can’t hire someone, do it yourself.
I believe in the value of this kind of testing so much that I wrote an entire
(short) book about how to do it. It’s called 
Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The
Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems
.

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It covers the topics in this chapter in a lot more detail and gives you step-by-
step directions for the whole process.

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How often should you test?
I think every Web development team should spend one morning a month
doing usability testing.

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In a morning, you can test three users, then debrief over lunch. That’s it.
When you leave the debriefing, the team will have decided what you’re
going to fix before the next round of testing, and you’ll be done with testing
for the month.
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If you’re doing Agile development, you’ll be doing testing more frequently, but the principles are
still the same. For instance, you might be testing with two users every two weeks. Creating a
fixed schedule and sticking to it is what’s important.
Why a morning a month?