Many companies or projects that you come across don’t allocate time needed to do testing, which is a big mistake in my opinion. I find guerrilla usability testing or doing guerrilla paper prototype testing very useful to get some initial data and feedback from people that have no bias or investment in your product. Getting your initial designs tested prior to spending extra design or even programming time in making a coded model saves you from spending time and money from going down the wrong path. Also you can move quickly through design and iterations by doing these early rounds of testing. It can be a lot of fun doing paper prototypes and testing as it has a real arts & crafts feel when you’re going through the process. Bottom line good research and good testing can save a lot of money and help save companies from developing nice to have wants of a CEO for example; to design and develop the wants & needs of actual users of those products to make it successful.
