Usability Testing w. 5 Users: Information Foraging (video 3 of 3)

Usability testing is similar to how wild animals hunt for food: we're trying to hunt down the design flaws in the user interface and must optimize a series of studies for total gain, rather than spend too much on any one study.
#UX #usability #usertesting

[@ralienpp]

Thanks for the video! I am not yet sure I fully understand the analogy in the second part (or maybe I understand it correctly, and it is just an expected limitation inherent to analogies). The fox is actually doing itself a service by not killing the remaining rabbit:
1. that rabbit is like a "seed" that will eventually lead to a growth of the rabbit population in that area, so the fox has something to look forward to upon return (of course, assuming there's someone there for that rabbit to mate with, so the fox should allow more than one rabbit to survive).
2. the remaining rabbit is fast and clever, so catching it would require more energy investments from "team fox". Thus, the fox migrates to the place where there are still fat and lazy rabbits available.
The uncaught usability issue, on the other hand - it just stays there. There's no benefit in leaving it undiscovered, but there _is_ a benefit in using the same amount of energy to find more issues on new territory (the "fat and lazy" problems are easier to find than the "fast and cunning" ones).
The lesson that I distilled from this, is that moving to another iteration of a prototype gives you an opportunity to harvest more low-hanging fruits, without increasing your energy investments.

[@ocubex]

COuld not top laughing when you mentioned suicidal rabbit... great anology.

[@pe9450]

Great analogy. Saving this video. Thank you

[@NNgroup]

Glad it was helpful!

[@he-wil3461]

nicely explains to convince people testing with 5 users on each design iteration

[@jeetmusic0]

Wow! That's a fantastic explanation!

[@omuriloribeiro]

Excelent analogy!

[@peppapig807]

brilliant!