Limited Usability Testing and Business Decisions

Summary: Some business stakeholders say that 5 test users can't represent all customers, and so it's too dangerous to release a new design. Better to keep existing workflows unchanged. How to respond to such claims.

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‘But You Tested with Only 5 Users!’: Responding to Skepticism About Findings From Small Studies

“That’s just one person” and “Our real users aren’t like that” are common objections to findings from qualitative usability testing. Address these concerns proactively to ensure your research is effective.

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Jakob Nielsen, Ph.D., is a retired principal and co-founder (with Dr. Donald A. Norman) of the Nielsen Norman Group. Jakob established the "discount usability engineering" movement for fast and cheap improvements of user interfaces and invented the heuristic evaluation method.

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