Usability testing on the cheap

How one experienced person conducts usability testing ...

"You've built a product. You think it's ready for real users. How do you find out? You do usability testing. This is a specialized discipline, and there are specialists out there who know what they are doing. You should hire one of them to do usability tests on your product. They will do a much better job than you can, and you will get much better results. But if you can't, here's how to do it yourself.

Disclaimer: I'm not a usability engineer, I'm a software engineer. But I've been through a fair amount of usability testing, on both sides of the one-way mirrors. I've learned from some real usability gurus, like Kara Coyne. So I know a little bit about how it is done. As I said, you should really hire an expert to do this stuff for you. There's lots of subtlety to doing it right."   continued ...   (Via Ned Batchelder)