This paper is by Saul Greenberg and Bill Buxton. The point of this paper is to point out that usability evaluations are not always the best means to test a product. The authors seem to think that usefulness tests would be better. However, these are hard to do, since it is always unknown how useful people will find a product. They also believe that tests appear to be almost required, and this should not necessarily be so.
The authors make some good points in this essay. However, I do not see usability evaluations disappearing in the near future. But it would be nice if there were other methods to evaluate products that might give a better understanding of how they would be taken out in the world.
I like the fact that they distinguish different phases in the development cycle as being more appropriate for usability evaluations.
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