17.1 Introduction

Pretend you are running a business. It is a high-risk business, and you need to succeed. Now imagine two people come to your office:

• The first person says, "I've identified all problems we might possibility have."

• The second person says, "I've identified the most likely problems and have fixed many of them. The system is measurably better than it was."

Which one would you reward? Which one would you want on your next project?

In our experience, businesses are far more interested in getting solutions than in uncovering issues. In addition, businesses want solutions sooner rather than later and want assurance that the solutions provided are good ones. We feel that these fundamental truths have often been forgotten in the literature on usability methods (Wixon, 2003). The rapid iterative testing and evaluation (RITE) method is a usability method designed with these business truths firmly in mind. Its focus is on quickly determining the sufficiency of solutions rather than solely identifying problems.

In this chapter we will do the following:

• Provide a definition for RITE

• State the business case for RITE

• Outline the pitfalls of using RITE

• State the conditions for using RITE effectively

• Provide successful case studies of RITE

• Draw a set of conclusions about RITE

Like the rest of this book, this chapter is about helping usability engineers convince their businesses that usability...