the facilitator’s main job is to encourage them to think out loud as much as possible. The combination of watching what the participants do and hearing what they’re thinking while they do it is what enables the observers to see the site through someone else’s eyes and understand why some things that are obvious to them are confusing or frustrating

If you’re doing Agile development, you’ll be doing testing more frequently, but the principles are still the same. For instance, you might be testing with two users every two weeks. Creating a fixed schedule and sticking to it is what’s important.

In all the time I’ve spent watching people use the Web, the thing that has struck me most is the difference between how we think people use Web sites and how they actually use them. When we’re creating sites, we act as though people are going to pore over each page, reading all of our carefully crafted text, figuring out how we’ve organized things,

The point is, it’s not productive to ask questions like “Do most people like pull-down menus?” The right kind of question to ask is “Does this pull-down, with these items and this wording in this context on this page create a good experience for most people who are likely to use this site?” And there’s really only one way to answer that kind of que

One of the most crucial items in the persistent navigation is a button or link that takes me to the site’s Home page.

Search.

Good taglines are just long enough, but not too long. Six to eight words seem to be long enough to convey a full thought, but short enough to absorb easily.

If something is usable—whether it’s a Web site, a remote control, or a revolving door—it means that A person of average (or even below average) ability and experience can figure out how to use the thing to accomplish something without it being more trouble than it’s worth.

If you have more than a sketch to show them, though, start by making a list of the tasks people need to be able to do with whatever you’re testing. For instance, if you’re testing a prototype of a login process, the tasks might be Create an account Log in using an existing username and password Retrieve a forgotten password Retrieve a forgotten use