Scott,

There is nothing wrong with healthy skepticism.  Aren't you glad that the FDA scrutinizes methods, experiments, and results?  Otherwise you would be buying snake oil that is advertised as curing anything from the common cold to who knows what :)

On a related note, let's face it - none of the methods in usability or user research are new!  They are all applications of psychology, anthropology, sociology, and technology.  

When the methods from these fields are applied to the corporate world, the danger of misuse is great.  Yes, you can run 5 participants and all of them do one thing or another and then you tell the VP of product development that the interface is a great success and millions are poured in developing the product and then nobody buys it or it has severe usability problems.  That's why "new" methods and approaches have to be validated before they are accepted.  In the corporate world, as in pharmacology, being wrong can be very costly.

Alex

Scott Berkun <[log in to unmask]> wrote: It's funny how some responses to this have been suspicious - if there's an 
anthropology of stereotypical usability engineer behavior, suspicion of new 
methods has got to be top of that list.  How do y'all think we got the 
methods we have now? That they just fell from the sky? :)  We have to 
experiment with the experiments.




 		
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