Ok, so I want everyone to know that I'm big on Usability Testing, both for web sites and for items we use everyday.

If you write or create something for a specific purpose, but few people know how to use it, doesn't that defeat your original purpose? With just a little bit of usability testing you can be sure that the majority of your users will use your product with little difficulty.

Of course if your product does not have a specific purpose, like a piece of art, then you need not do any usability testing. People will see your product and try to figure out what it is, or how it works, like a puzzle. While this may be interesting for a statue or work of art, on a web site this will simply drive people away (on the internet) or make people frustrated (on the intranet). Is this the impression you want to leave for your web site? Certainly not!

Here are some key points to consider about doing Usability Testing:

1. More people will use your web site. On the internet, if your site is hard to use people will simply go to another site that they can use. They won't study or try to learn your site because there are so many bad sites on the internet. They simply give up. When they prematurely escape your site all that investment and hard work you put into the site is wasted. Don't let this happen to your site.
2. People won't get frustrated. You could say that the intranet is a captive audience. Employees surfing an intranet have nowhere else to go for certain information. That doesn't mean they like using badly designed sites. They get frustrated, they vent, and they get angry. In this process they tell all their coworkers how bad the site is, they are not doing their work. They are also distracting coworkers so they also are not doing their work. All this reduces worker productivity, which costs you and your company money.
3. Your product will be less complex if you do usability testing. A simpler design means it won't break as easily and will be easier to test. You'll get a more reliable product with less required maintenance. More uptime means a less expensive product. Think quality.
4. Testing is not expensive. If you allocate 10% of your development budget you can do usability testing. It's not so expensive and you'll surely get a positive return on investment
5. Usability testing is not as intuitive as you would expect. "Of course they'll be able to use it" the programmer says, but to me the screen is totally incomprehensible. No matter how I try to convince the project manager and programmer, they are convinced the design is perfect. They do, however, change their mind when they see people struggling and getting frustrated when using their web site. It is a sobering situation for all.
6. You'll pay for usability testing now or later. If you don't do usability testing you'll save 10% of your budget. However you may drive away more than 10% of your intended audience once the site goes live. Or your users will take 10% more time to accomplish their intended task. This costs the company much more than the initial investment in usability testing. Don't cut corners and let someone else pay extra for your badly designed site.

Usability testing is a necessary part of all web sites. The more your users use your site, the more you should do usability testing.