> although Jakob Nielsen's work has shown that you reach the point of quickly diminishing returns after testing with 5-10 users
This gets tossed around a lot, but is usually misinterpreted. What 5-10 users will get you is discovering the mere existence of most usability problems. What much larger sample sizes will get you is an idea of how many people are likely to experience that problem, which is very helpful when talking about trade-offs in meeting the needs of various types of users.
This gets tossed around a lot, but is usually misinterpreted. What 5-10 users will get you is discovering the mere existence of most usability problems. What much larger sample sizes will get you is an idea of how many people are likely to experience that problem, which is very helpful when talking about trade-offs in meeting the needs of various types of users.