The other day, a colleague mentioned that he's been asked to perform another round of usability testing on a product that's already gone through at least three rounds. This should be exciting news as I love hearing that a product is going through several iterations and getting lots of face time with its users. However, in this case, very few usability recommendations from previous rounds have been implemented. So it's a bit disappointing to hear the project team wants to go through another round of testing when the liklihood is that the recommendations will remain on paper and not find their way into the product.
When I've encountered this situation in the past, I've done one of two things. If the problems are serious enough and definitely persistent, I will do one more round of testing and be sure to highlight in my results that this is consistent with findings from every previous round. Usually that does the trick for a team that really wants to release a user-friendly product. If I'm not sure the project team will use my results, I'll set up a meeting, reiterating the importance of following through on past usability test results and insist that the critical issues be addressed before any further testing will commence. That method usually works when it's just a project manager who has hedged on making changes.
The question I have is what do you do when neither of these methods works? Do you give up and move on to another project, writing off any chance of fixing the product or do you keep pushing the project team to develop for their users?
I'd like to open this up for discussion. What is your advice on how to handle this? Usability analysts - what works for you?
I'd also like to hear from those who work with usability teams. What do you need to hear from us to help drive usability-related changes?
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