Things that go wrong in usability tests

A lot of planning goes into a usability test. Part of good planning means being prepared for the many things that can go wrong.

Here are the ten most common problems we encounter in usability testing and some ideas for how to avoid or manage them when they inevitably occur.

1. Users don’t show up : No-shows are a fact of life for usability testing. We email, confirm by phone and then send reminder emails and phone calls and still have users who don’t show up. On average we anticipate about a 10% no-show rate, regardless of the honorarium. For that reason we usually recruit 10% more than we need and have extra users on a stand-by list.

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