Jakob Nielsen tells us that to become a great usability professional, we need:

• Knowledge of interaction theory and user-research methodologies, especially the principles of user testing
• High brain power
• Ten years’ experience running user tests and other usability activities, such as field studies

Ten years!!

In the past year, I have run 60 usability tests, and over 50 field interviews/contextual enquiries. Do I need another 9 years of this to say that I’m a usability professional? Do my 60 tests a year count for the same as someone else’s 6 tests a year?

I know I’m still learning, and I would like to evaluate a wider variety of products, but how many of us have been doing this for 10 years?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 23rd, 2002 at 9:52 am and is filed under Usability evaluation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.