Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (Voices That Matter)

RECRUIT LOOSELY AND GRADE ON A CURVE In other words, try to find users who reflect your audience, but don’t get hung up about it.

It’s good to do your testing with participants who are like the people who will use your site, but the truth is that recruiting people who are from your target audience isn’t quite as important as it may seem. For many sites, you can do a lot of your testing with almost anybody. And if you’re just starting to do testing, your site probably has a nu

And three users are very likely to encounter many of the most significant problems related to the tasks that you’re testing.

You can find more problems in half a day than you can fix in a month.

Do-it-yourself tests are a qualitative method whose purpose is to improve what you’re building by identifying and fixing usability problems. The process isn’t rigorous at all: You give them tasks to do, you observe, and you learn. The result is actionable insights, not proof.

Testing one user early in the project is better than testing 50 near the end.

defuse most arguments and break impasses by

Any shared resource (a “commons”) will inevitably be destroyed by overuse.

A motto expresses a guiding principle, a goal, or an ideal, but a tagline conveys a value proposition. Mottoes are lofty and reassuring, but if I don’t know what the thing is, a motto isn’t going to tell me.