6.1 Dogfood

»Dogfooding« is a term in software development which refers to using the software you work on. And that is exactly what you should do as one of the easiest methods to find out usability issues: Use the software yourself as much as you can. Rely on it for what it does. If you use the software in your daily workflow you will eventually experience more and more usability issues. You need to always cross-test them with actual non-technical users. While you might be a usability expert, the true experts of the interface are still the people using it. The other developers should use the software regularly as well. Encourage everyone to use it and pay attention to issues they discover. When the developers themselves see the problems and stumble over them regularly, they are more likely to just fix them. Similar to this method is 6.4 Benchmark other software which basically is dogfooding the other way around: Using a similar product to find out the advantages and disadvantages.