Usability@90mph: Presenting and evaluating a new, high-speed method for demonstrating user testing in front of an audience

This article documents the authors' attempt to develop a quick, inexpensive, and reliable method for demonstrating user testing to an audience. The resulting method, Usability@90mph, is simple enough to be conducted at minimal expense, fast enough to be completed in only thirty minutes, comprehensible enough to be presented to audiences numbering in the hundreds, and yet sophisticated enough to produce relevant design recommendations, thereby illustrating for the audience the potential value of user testing in general. In this article, the authors present their user testing demonstration method in detail, analyze results from 44 trials of the method in practice, and discuss lessons learned for demonstrating user testing in front of an audience.