Many designers and developers believe that if they can get their mothers to use a site correctly, or even decently, they’ve succeeded in making the site usable. The idea has always seemed to be that the developer’s poor mother is aparently the worst web user on the planet, or at least close to it.

The thing no one mentions is that a lot of people have done this test, and not all of these mothers can be the web’s worst users.

What does this mean?

Mothers are not the tried-and-true test of usability because they’re the worst users. It’s because they’re typical users.

Many mothers are no worse off in computer-savviness than the average banker or lawyer or fly-fisherman. Many mothers, even those with less than 3 months experience using the web, are no worse off than people who have been using the web for 2 years.

Why? Because it doesn’t matter how long you use the web, it matters how much you understand about it. And most people never need to know how or why this big mess of modern technology we call “the web” works. They only care about getting things done.

Next time you run the Mother Test, remember afterwards that there are several million other people out there that do the same things your mother does. They make the same mistakes, they have the same misconceptions, and they care just as little as your mother about being proficient on the web.

If you design commercial software or web applications, those are your users.

Posted by Robert on March 8th, 2007