Computer World — “Improving the usability of an electronic device or software application could mean more to a business’s profit or market share than recruiting an extra developer to get the innovation to market more quickly.”

Good article. I’d like to make three points. First, as Fred Brooks clearly explains in The Mythical Man-Month you can’t add developers to a project to get it done faster. Adding developers will actually slow down development, in most cases. Put another way, nine women can’t have one baby in one month.

Second, instead of throwing usability testing at the problem, or adding extra developers, why not train existing developers on usability? Build usability into the culture of the company. Add usability methods to the development process instead of trying to slap usability testing on top of the process. (By the way, I’m writing an article about this for Boxes and Arrows. Should be in print in a few weeks if all goes well.)

Finally, nearly everything in this article agrees with my comments about putting profits before users. Usability certainly does help the bottom line, and that is the way to think about it. Usability should be a mechanism to drive profits. When you compare adding a developer to a project versus doing usability testing, usability testing will probably win in terms of return on investment (ROI). And in turn, in light of my comments above, usability training for developers is often a better investment than usability testing. In any event, this is all good stuff. Generates a great discussion, if you ask me.

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