Lost our lease, going-out-of-business-sale usability testing

Usability testing has been around for a long time, and the basic idea is pretty simple: If you want to know whether your software or your Web site or your VCR remote control is easy enough to use, watch some people while they try to use it and note where they run into trouble. Then fix it, and test it again.

In the beginning, though, usability testing was a very expensive proposition. You had to have a usability lab with an observation room behind a one-way mirror, and at least two video cameras so you could record the users’ reactions and the thing they were using. You had to recruit a lot of people so you could get results that were statistically significant. It was Science. It cost $20,000 to $50,000 a shot. It didn’t happen very often.