Usability Testing: Difference Between Purchaser and End User

June 24 12:30 2011 by Nataliia Vasylyna Print This Article

During determining the user proﬁle in Usability Testing, you should understand the difference between the purchaser or buyer of the product and the actual end user.

It happens so that the user proﬁle is slanted toward someone who makes the buying decision but who doesn’t know anything about the troubles that the end users face with. You apparently would not want to bring in ‘‘purchasers’’ to test the product; that will give you a very slanted opinion of how the product is conducting.

One more possible trap is that the end user of the product and the end user of the documentation may be different. This is particularly true for huge systems being developed for internal end users, where only one or two people (system administrator, for example) will receive documentation.

The rest part of the end users will be left to their own devices or will have to ask for the documentation.