Usability@90mph

Paul F. Marty and Michael B. Twidale have published an article entitled Usability@90mph in the peer review journal first monday.

In the article they introduce a rapid approach for demonstrating (selling?) user testing.

On the whole it's a interesting approach and I can certainly see the benefits from an educational stand point but my over riding worry would be that in this high speed world people would start using their approach as a replacement for real user testing.

In their conclusion Marty and Twidale do point out the dangers of their approach and I'm heartened to see that they recognised the treat to traditional user testing.

n.b. At the risk of sounding like a hypocrite, their approach might work well for early stage user testing and could be considered for preserving usability budgets for later stage testing. A way of integrating more user testing into the process perhaps?