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Comparative Usability Evaluation wisdom

Rolf Molich contrasting Comparative Usability Evaluation (CUE) with Jakob Nielsen’s rubric that testing a design with 5 users will reveal 85% of the most important usability problems.

When you conduct a usability evaluation of a non-trivial website or product, most likely you will only find and report the tip of the iceberg — some 30 random problems out of hundreds.

Rolf Molich

The CUE studies consistently show that the number of usability problems in most real-world websites is huge. Most CUE studies found more than 200 different usability problems for a single state-of-the-art website. About half of them were rated serious or critical.

The essential truth behind Nielsen’s recommendation to test with 5 representative users is its achievability in terms of resource and scale. Also, that usability testing is undertaken as part of iterative cycles of user-centred research and design.

By Rik Williams

I write about how to collaborate to design simple, usable and inclusive information experiences that make the lives of customers easier. Read more in Categories and Tags.