UI Testing - Way Easier Than You Think

I keep reading blogs saying how you don't need to spend tons of cash to do usability testing. All you need to do is grab a few people off the street (or from where ever) and pay them $50 for an hour of testing.

Personally I think this is still too extreme. I can't tell you how much value I get from just asking anyone in the office to try out a feature I am working on. I get enormous insights into the user experiencet by simply shutting up and paying close attention to what the person is doing, where they hesitate, when then looked confused, etc.

Not only does this save money, but, more importantly, it makes it easier to do user testing. I don't care if the person is a geeky developer. The vast majority of people will respond in very similar ways to a user interface. If you do this frequently with very specific tasks that only take a few minutes to complete then the value of the feedback is way greater than if you wait until the product is complete and do one session where a user is asked to perform dozens of tasks. At least this has been the case in my experience.