Beyond Usability Testing

As web professionals, we’re accustomed to putting out fine websites based on best practices, analytics data, competitor review, secondary research, and our own expertise. Talented as we may be, though, it can be hard to stay aggressively committed to optimizing the user experience when more powerful and immediate success indicators like client satisfaction, aesthetic appeal, and ease of development and maintenance all compete for our attention. To overcome these boundaries on the empathy that we can extend to our sites’ imagined visitors, there’s no substitute for research conducted with actual users.

 | Read article