The Pros and Cons of Bal Mockups for User Testing

A friend of mine among other things do Usability Testing and he reviewed Balsamiq Mockups from a point of view of someone who wants to use it for Usability Testing. All his comments are too long to put in here, so I will mention a few and if you would like, you can read the rest on his blog. I really think there are some very valid points here for what Balsamiq can be in the future.

Some Points:
There are at least three good reasons to create interface sketches and prototypes:
1. To get new ideas and quickly explore and enhance them in design sessions with colleagues. Balsamiq is right at home here.
2. To usability test ideas with target users. Balsamiq is close to being very useful here.
3. To explain, persuade and demonstrate to other project stakeholders. Balsamiq needs quite a lot of work here.

Balsamiq mockups could be great for cost effective, early-stage usability testing. The interfaces are quick to create, and they look messy enough to allow users to give negative feedback if required. But usability testing a Balsamiq prototype has three problems:
1. Fullscreen mode features a giant blue mouse cursor that turns upside down and a giant hand cursor for hyperlinks. This is weird and distracting for a user to contend with during a usability test.
2. The giant blue cursor disappears when you try to touch a scrollbar, increasing the weirdness further.
3. Highly visible hotspots, that show user exactly where to click, and tooltips that tell you the name of the page you'll get if you do click. These features "give the game away" in ways that are counter-productive in usability tests.

For the rest, please read here: http://fronttoback.org/2009/05/06/bal...