By William Jeffrey Rankin, Sat May 19 2018
Some notes on why self-referential design is a problem, and why usability testing is important.
Notes:
- The team will have changes to the product design in mind: enhancements or new features.
- There will be overlap in the design changes desired among the team members.
- Usability testing will confirm that some of the changes suggested by the team are necessary.
- There will likely be many unanticipated discoveries: completely new issues, designs thought well-vetted present difficulties for users, and those thought of as clunky prove to be intuitive or usable. This is why we test!
- Takeaway: Self-referential design will cause you to fix problems that aren't there, and miss real problems that would have been discovered through usability testing.
