Usability Testing

[Rowena Hart <rhart -at- INTRINSYC -dot- COM>]

My questions about sophisticated users led pretty quickly
to the subject of usability testing, which I'm trying to learn
more about because <grin> if it happens at all I'll probably
be the person designing and performing the testing.

Carol Gasser asked:

  Is this the kind of thing that is being referred to on the list, or are
  technical writers out there being asked to perform actual usability
  tests?  It really seems like a leap out of the tech writer job
  description.

As Carol and George Hayhoe pointed out, technical writers
are not qualified to perform usability testing.  I would love to
hire someone to do it but, as it stands, we don't have the cash
or the time to bring in professionals.  That means the task
will be given to the person who needs the data most -- me.

I'm still in the early stages of researching usability tests, but I'm
a bit curious that the idea of carrying out usability testing in
the beta release stage of a software product's life cycle has
been soundly rejected.  Why?  Isn't usability part and parcel
of identifying "whether there are any operational problems that
haven't surfaced in the limited testing that is built into most
development processes," as George writes?

Beta tests might be more concerned with the GUI and the
performance of processes and operations, but this kind of
testing leads almost inevitably to documentation.  Why
stop short of testing the usability of documentation in a
beta test?  I guess the obvious answer is that documentation
should be pretty near perfect when the beta release is sent
to customers.  This hasn't been my observation or experience,
however.  Usually the documentation is in pretty rough shape
at the beta stage, a result of crazy production deadlines and
rampant "we don't have time for documentation right now"
attitudes among engineers and programmers.

 "Writing is triage," there's no doubt about that!  And I think
that in the controlled panic around here, I'll have to develop
some usability tests quickly.  They may not be great tests,
but at least they'll provide data to work with.

Thanks!

Rowena

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Rowena Hart
Technical Writer
Intrinsyc Software, Inc.
http://www.intrinsyc.com