These things are external to our users and are easy to test. Now for the end user, they will do things that you never imagined. In early 1998 I held an informal usability session at, of all places, a developer conference. The website was intended for developers so this was the best place to have this test, but this was scary. Developers can be like guitarists; they all know that they can do it better then you. I was scared. Did I do enough homework and testing before unleashing my baby on these Mountain Dew breathing crazies?

The purpose of this web tool was to allow users to buy tech support, manage their contact information, gain access to NDA'd software, purchase software and to transfer these items to other users of the system. Lots of unknowns. For these reason I had conducted a bunch of testing throughout the build process. But I never imagined the user that would stroll into the testing session at the developers conference.

As soon as he walked in the room, I wanted to walk out. Everything sucked for this guy. Nothing impressed him. After introducing myself and explaining the system he laughed at me and grabbed the nearest computer. The first complaint was that there was not enough contrast (white background, black text) and he went straight for my jugular, Edit->Preferences. Not a single user tested had done this. My pulse quickened and all of the previous testers flashed before my eyes. There was Tom the assistant to the director in my department, Lydia the head of a call center in Scotland, Kiro-san that was a developer relations manager in Tokyo. Dammit, not a single one was a real end-user of the system. I was dead. Before me, sitting before my design, was the angry programmer and he was aiming for the preferences. Within seconds he had boosted the fonts 4 sizes, changed the background color to an eye piercing yellow, and turned off the stylesheet. My design, which I spent months tweaking, was reduced to a lopsided, misshappen turd. I shuddered and eyed the fastest exit.

The next 20 minutes were excruitiating as he went thru the test plan. If I was playing poker against him I would have folded immediately and cashed out. Instead I moved quickly to a safe distance.

He raised his hand and looked around the room for me. Question time. Gulp. I came out from underneath the desk and nest of cables I was hiding in and came over. A rabitts heart can beat up to 325 times per minute. Mine was easily double that as I walked the 20 steps to his desk. His eyes filled up the lenses of his coke bottle glasses. "Can I see the French version?"

"Uh... what?"

"It says here that this agreement is available in French?" I knew he was not human. I was even convinced our lawyers had not read these. Written in a such a way to make sure that we owned you and you were liable for just having had this page on your screen. Every software product has one and no one has ever read them. They are silly beyond belief and would probably never stand up in court but this guy was poring over every line of the terms of use and software license and smiling. He enjoyed this stuff?!?

"I'll have to look into that for you." With a smirk and a shrug, he got up, said the system was fine and pointed out some minor user interface inconsistencies. Nothing too bad.

The lesson: Even though your end-users are a loathsome bunch, they are not to be feared. They can even be helpful. Mr. Edit->Preferences, the scariest of the bunch, provided a very useful tester by using the system in a way they was not intended. The system was made better by meeting the real users of the system. I will admit that to this day that end-users still scare me because they have the potentinal to show you that you are a moron. If you don't test with real users you are a moron. Meet your users and you project will be better for it. And take solace in the fact that my users are scarier than yours. For example, for a current project the intended users a bunch of hippy activists. Shudder.