verbatim |vərˈbātəm| adverb & adjective
in exactly the same words as were used originally : [as adv. ] subjects were instructed to recall the passage verbatim | [as adj. ] your quotations must be verbatim.
ORIGIN late 15th cent.: from medieval Latin, from Latin verbum ‘word.’ Compare with literatim .

Good point. We actually call these consistency checks in our book. They are quite effective as well. In fact, one of the side benefits of SUS is that it can be used as a consistency check given the alternating positive/negative worded statements.

“Was it easy to find the information you needed?”

“Was it difficult to find the information you needed?”

Now I’m wondering which of these two ways is better – or do they complement each other. Perhaps your straightforward question actually provides more accurate feedback. Opinion?

I have to agree a lot of usability services are overpriced, but I think this will change in due course. We’ve recently introduced our own usability testing service at http://intuitionhq.com at $9 a test, which we think is really reasonable and works well for freelancers or smaller design studios.

A lot of our job is educating clients about usability testing, and the value that can be gained from in. In that respect, articles like this are invaluable. I think people are starting to have more awareness of what the web could be like if usability and the user experience have more of a focus, and I’m really hopeful this trend will continue long term.

Thanks again for the great read.