The Online Journalism Review just published a five step guide for website usability testing that can gauge readers’ reactions to multimedia projects and website design. A very solid guide to making sure that what you produce actually reaches and communicates with your audience.

OJR’s ‘five guide’ to do-it-yourself website usability testing
Use these steps, and these forms, to test how readers will react to your new multimedia project or website design.
By Laura Ruel and Nora Paul
You’ve put months of work into a special multimedia project. The time-consuming processes of creating and editing text, audio, photos, video and animated graphics has been arduous, but rewarding. You’ve learned more about Flash programming and debugging than you ever intended. And now that there’s an end in sight, you are more than ready to get the package online and out of your life. Enter the spoiler — the person who utters the words “usability test.” “Why bother?” you think. The site works, you know that. You’ve been showing it to your newsroom colleagues along the way. You’ve listened to their feedback. You’ve made changes you thought were necessary. What more could you learn? What more? How about 80 percent of the problems with the package? How about architecture flaws you never considered? How about the differences between a good design and a great one? -more