Do We Really Need Traditional Usability Lab for UX Practice?

Many IT companies in India and across the globe have “User experience” (UX) associates to support UI and Usability. Many of these companies have a well organized UX practice with their own targets, profit and loss statements. Some of the companies boast of a having support of extensive Usability Labs and user testing infrastructure. The billing of usability testing services is much higher than the UI design and usability review services. The IT services companies have a model of offshore development for cost reduction and many usability labs are underutilized. The investment to set-up and run a usability lab is made with the objective of winning additional business and show more value to clients. There are a very few projects which really need detailed UX participation, user research and user testing through usability labs. Usability labs are expensive to establish and maintain. This brings us to the questions of ROI and whether the high cost of usability lab infrastructure is justified. This paper looks at the various aspects and business models which can help an IT company decide whether to set-up a usability lab or not and what can be an ideal model to sustain it.