Just-in-Time Usability Testing
If you've ever worked in a state-of-the-art usability lab, with skilled user experience staff, you probably find it hard to consider a product finished until it's been tested for usability. Unfortunately, most companies don't have the infrastructure, budget or time for this sort of testing. While I believe it's too expensive not to do usability testing, I know that it's still very difficult for a PM to insist when deadlines are tight and there's no in-house usability infrastructure. Not doing usability testing costs money and time - the later a usability problem is discovered, the more it costs to fix. Find a problem in the spec/prototype stage, and it's trivial. Find it during beta testing, and it's a lot more expensive to fix. Find it after shipping, and the cost can be measured in extra tech support and lost sales, and then it may still have to be fixed in the next release. Clever user experience designers (you have some of them, right?) have d...