I think there is great benefit to having an independent (person or
group) do the testing of a design. I also think there is benefit to
having product managers generate the use cases designers work to
solve for. Additionally, having the back end development team do the
QA is troublesome.
I agree that this sounds like a lack of professionalism. Maybe they
did not spot the same issues that you saw? If they saw the issues, I
am not sure why they would not have taken those learnings to heart and
used them to improve the design. In the end, better design would make
them look better
It sounds a little like an own goal here, but only work done by
someone else would show this up. If their usability testing doesn't
show up defects in their design, then I would be asking what are they
being paid for? (except for being able to tick the relevant box)
I guess it's one of those
Recently I was on an e-commerce strategy project. I received a
usability test report that the previous agency had produced after
testing their own design work. I went back to the source tapes and
there seemed to be a dramatic difference between the level of
problems users were having in the
Paul, I think your example speaks more to a lack of professionalism on
the part of the previous agency than an inherent conflict of interest.
At my firm, Lofthouse Design, we have always conducted usability
testing on the sites and applications we design. In doing so, we find
opportunities to
