Hence I’m suggesting we stop calling anything usability testing unless it is indeed usability testing.

So here’s to violent agreement :)

Which two different activities are unfortunately both being called usability testing and by whom? And if they are, whomever they are, they are wrong. There is only one type of activity that should be called usability testing.

I think we may both be in violent agreement.

I guess my background is pretty classical, old school human factors in software design. I started work before I heard of interaction designers, information architects, user experience designers, Ux, IDx, etc. etc. I have 25 years in applied human factors in industry software development and design with classical academic training (Ph.D.s) in human factors psychology and systems engineering. I am an old dog that cut its teeth in a dark usability test lab conducting system level usability tests. Bow wow. ;-) Thanks for the dialog. I guess we can consider the loop closed. But by all means, please continue if you prefer.

If you do…

“…a very specific type of user activity involving an actual running product focusing on objective task measures as well as subjective measures, using representative users, representative tasks, performed at the end of the development effort, prior to product release.”

…then fair enough, continue to call it usability testing.

I’m talking about lower fidelity, more casual forms of user engagement. Testing is not the right word for that. And it seems you agree with me:

“The problem I have is when people (especially HF people, this really burns me up) call ALL user activities ‘usability testing’. Usability testing is not performed early in the design process, like a requirements brainstorming session, or a high-level paper design walkthrough. These are diferent user activities, deserving of different names.”

And I also agree with you last point. Possibly why you’re not getting me is that we are talking about quite different activities that are unfortunately both called usability testing.

Out of interest, what’s your background?

The people we talk to in design research might be part of ‘the market’ but to thus call it market research is like saying you’re a psychologist just because you have a chat to someone who might happen to see a psychologist (ok that’s the best analogy I could come up with!).

And this was my whole point, the name we give a technique markedly affects its perception and acceptance by other disciplines.

The problem I have is when people (especially HF people, this really burns me up) call ALL user activities ‘usability testing’. Usability testing is not performed early in the design process, like a requirements brainstorming session, or a high-level paper design walkthrough. These are diferent user activities, deserving of different names.

I am sorry, but I can’t let it slide when the project manager refers to a recent set of telephone interviews with IT admins on pain points with managing IT systems as a usability test. If I do, I think it’s a disservice to everyone involved. I know it can lead to painful discussions, but these points are not esoteric, mattering only to the HF person in the group. The project manager would not call a high-level code review a unit test, and if they did, they would be educated pretty quickly, and probably publicly abused for being so ignorant of the process.

That is why we concentrate on what people do over what they say.

You can read a good article on that subject here:
http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/askingwhy.html