Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to present a new breakthrough in web site design and development – the Alcohol Based Usability Testing Theorem (hereafter ABUTT).
The basis of ABUTT is that usability testing can be difficult to organise but that so long as you can organise the proverbial piss up in a brewery you can still gain most of the benefits of usability testing and improve employee happiness at the same time.
How ABUTT works
First, take your team to the pub for a good old fashioned liquid lunch.
Then, take them back to the office and ask them to test the web site. With the alcohol coursing through their bloodstream their co-ordination, memory, reading and comprehension skills are all impaired. In other words, they begin to approach the level of web use skill demonstrated by the average man in the cyber-cafe.
Watch and take notes.
Well, it should demonstrate Fitts’s Law if nothing else.