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I still think that Usability Experts and tests are important for several reasons.

The first is that someone has to be responsible for the usability in a project. If there isn’t a usability representitive than there’s a big chance that some heuristic problems are overlooked. I’ve seen many designers and even myself as a usability expert overlooking the usability of my own designs and websites because of my tunnelvision towards the end of the project.

I’m not saying that real usability experts have to be brought into projects. No, it’s just that someone (with a prefered usability eye) has to be responsible guarding the usability and be seperated from the design and development sections.

The second reason and also related to the first is that someone also being a designer often becomes ‘in love’ with his or her design. As usability experts are familiar with this fenominon, it often leads to blindness towards usability problems. And altough I can teach someone to be critical towards his or her own design I’ve found that often this is very hard. Also… working on the same design day in day out makes one pretty blind towards usability aspects of that design.

Peter Blansjaar (The Netherlands)
Usability Expert
peter@blansjaar.com

(I excuse for any language and writing mistakes)