BIB_08: McGovern, H. (2005). Not Just Usability Testing: Remembering and applying non-usability testing methods for learning how web site function. Technical Communication, 52(2), 175-186.

In this article, McGovern points out the limitations of usability testing in understanding how Web sites function, and calls for alternative methods using an example of a project she carried out to redesign a Web site. McGovern argues that usability testing has narrow scope that focuses on specific tasks, and seldom considers Web site characteristics contextually. She then offers a review of research that has been done to address these limitations, such as developing Web heuristics, improving testing procedures, expanding user studies, and applying rhetorical and literary theory to Web usability studies. Based on her literature review, McGovern argues that usability testing alone is inadequate to understand users in specific contexts. She then uses a Web redesign project to illustrate how mixed methods that owe their origins to rhetoric studies, social sciences and humanities, such as rhetorical analysis, content analysis, audience analysis and field work, can help us understand the users and improve Web usability.

This article provides an example of using mixed methods to understand Web users and usability in a specific context. The methods the author uses in her example are those used most by researchers with a rhetorical or a humanities background in general. The limitations of usability testing echoes many authors in technical communication, but I can't help thinking if the increasing attention paid to non-usability testing methods is a reaction to the domination of usability testing (and other scientific methods) in the field. In any case, this is a great article to use when discuss methods in cultural Web usability research because of its emphasis on the context.