Fear and Usability

Here's a short.

Last week, I learned something that I shared with my colleagues and I am going to share with you right now.

Apparently, there was fear in our UX Team that some of our clients (who were also our participants) in our usability sessions, would do nothing but complain about their problems because of support or implementation issues. The fear was based on how they would undermine our efforts and make a debacle of testing our new application.

Well, if you happen to have such issues, worry no longer.

I told them:

"Firstly, there is no proof that this is going to happen."

"Second, if all we do is make things up and dwell on them, they just might come true. So in this sense, focus will quash any kind of worry."

One thing I said to calm my colleagues was the fact that based on my own experiences:

"Once they see a new screen and that's all they see, and you listen to them with keen ears, all their worries that could become vicious attacks, all disappear. This is because they're concentrating on giving you proper feedback to your study."

Have your participants focus on the task at hand and this will give you the results you want.