Despite everyone agreeing during UI design that user testing was needed for a particular product, I was warned that the schedule would not slip no matter what was found. I got the vibe everyone agreed my efforts would be useless since it’s more important to make a date than have a quality product.
After 5 users weighed in, there were two obvious omissions in our app. Every single user tried to do these two things without any prodding and became frustrated when it didn’t work. I still had to do a bit of fighting to get the changes in, but that’s another story.
We overlooked these two obvious things in our design process. This happened because we were too close to the product. We were focused in a couple other areas and made some glaring omissions. This is what user testing gets you. Watch someone interact with your product. Just observe for 5 minutes and take notes. You learn as much from that as you do in the entire design process.