It depends. :-) That answer drives clients crazy, doesn't it? But the practice of usability is all about context; there is never just one method that works for every situation.

Christian Rohrer, a Jakob Nielsen associate, lays out a great method for determining with usability methods are most useful for uncovering what kind of information in the latest Alert Box, When to Use Which User Experience Research Methods.

When the "product" you are testing is documentation or another technical communication product, there are several methods available that are not listed in Rohrer's article. I suspect the Norman Nielsen Group is seldom asked to test documentation.

Most of us in UUX, however, are focused on documentation and other communication products. Because of this, David Dick, Assistant UUX Manager and Chauncey Wilson are planning an STC conference progression focused on usability methods for testing documentation.

Webmaster Cheryl St. Charles and I are also working on a usability resource list with a focus on documentation usability. We hope to make that available before the end of 2008.

Labels: methods