So when renowned design researcher Jared Spool wrote up his thoughts on the IxDA discussion list about why understanding business models is important to interaction designers, I encouraged him to turn it into a blog post so the community at large could reference it and so that others could benefit from his insights.

From the article:

“Creating a great experience can be an expensive investment. Unless the designer can clearly show the value of that investment, they’ll be constantly fighting the forces of reducing costs to increase profitability. It’s always cheaper to produce crap, so if you don’t understand how quality factors into long term profitability, crap is what will win.

Designers that can’t talk to value in the business model also can’t explain why they themselves should be on the payroll.”

Couldn’t have said it better ourselves, Jared. Thanks for a great piece.

When Jared Spool (UIE) talked about running 5-second tests to test the usability and understandability of a web page, I was inspired. I’ve used this trick many times since, and can personally vouch for its greatness. To spread the word about this great technique, I wrote about it in Designing the Obvious.

And then a man named Matt Milosavljevic read the book, got inspired, and built an application that—you guessed it—facilitates 5-second tests. And in doing so, created what may be the fastest way to test a site … ever.

1. Create an image of a screen you’d like to test. This can be a screenshot of a current app, a comp, or even a sketch on a napkin (scanned, of course). Tip: you can use Skitch to create screenshots in just a few seconds.

2. Upload the image at www.fivesecondtest.com and plug in your email address.

3. Email the URL for the 5-second test (shown on the subsequent page) to anyone willing to give you some quick feedback. If you have a decent amount of followers, post the link to Twitter and/or Facebook and ask for volunteers.

4. Sit back and relax.

When a user clicks the link, she sees a page that explains how the test works and what to do. When she clicks the button to start the test, your uploaded image displays for 5 seconds, then disappears. The user is then asked to enter everything she can remember about the image (via 5 input fields on the next screen). When she clicks “Done”, she sees a Thank You page and an email is sent to you that contains all of her responses.

Once you have replies from a few users, you’ll spot the trends. Are they noticing the most important things in your design? If not, tweak the design and run another test.

Simple as that.

The whole thing takes about 30 seconds to set up, and 60 seconds for your users to complete. It really couldn’t be easier.

And with that, you’ve officially run out of excuses not to do some kind of usability testing. If you have a minute to gossip by the water cooler, you have enough time to run a usability test.

Many thanks to Matt for turning what could have been a far more complicated application into something extremely simple. Not only will I start using this app regularly, I’ll be recommending it at every available opportunity.

Our motivation

First, the story.

Late one night, while watching a television show about sustainable furniture design, I heard a designer say he used to have a boss who often paraphrased an old African proverb that goes, “If you think you’re too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a room with a mosquito.”

Inspired, I immediately wrote it down. The next morning, it was the first thing on my mind. A few hours later, I filed the paperwork to turn Miskeeto, LLC into my new business.

The part I‘ve never mentioned before now is that for months prior to hearing the proverb, I’d grown increasingly disheartened by the idea of spending the rest of my life doing little more than helping companies make copious amounts of money (when it comes down to it, that’s what most designers do for a living). I thought that if I was going to spend all my time designing—something I am extremely passionate about—I’d like for those projects to genuinely improve the world in some way. Any designer can help the Fortune 500s and startups of the world make money. I wanted to do something deeper. More meaningful.

Upon hearing that old African proverb, Miskeeto was born. Something about those words inspired me. Filled me with ambition. Gave me something to believe in.

The proverb reiterated something I’d always believed—that even a single person can have a big impact on the world.

Fortunately, two of the best developers in the business—two of my dear friends—felt the same way.

Mosquitoes are bad, Miskeetos are good

Why the funny spelling? Well, two reasons.

First, mosquitoes are known to spread malaria, which kills over 1 million people every year, and for obvious reasons I didn’t want to create an association between disease and design. The distinction is simple:

• a mosquito is a little bug that bites people and spreads disease
• a miskeeto is a person or small group that, in spite of (and possibly because of) its size, is able to have a positive impact on the world through socially-conscious and socially-responsible action

The second reason is that all but one of the possible spellings I came up with were unavailable as domain names. Go figure.

So, how does our business model support enable us to have a positive impact on the world?

If you’re socially-conscious, you save 10%

First, we discount our work by 10% for any company or organization whose project qualifies as socially-conscious and/or socially-responsible.

If not, 10% goes to the greater good

Second, we now devote 10% of our income from every for-profit, commercial-only project to a worthy cause, such as a charity, a foundation, a socially-conscious project of our own (such as an awareness campaign), or any number of things.

Find out more (complete with examples) on our Pricing page.

As we go forward, we’ll continue pointing out these worthy causes through the Miskeeto Bytes blog.

Big enough to change the world

Miskeeto is a tiny collective, but between us, we’ve designed and/or built thousands of sites, and we’ve influenced, taught, and helped tens of thousands of web designers and developers create better user experiences through our books, articles, speaking engagements, and training sessions.

Now, as a team, we’re pooling our efforts to improve the world beyond the web.

And we’re confident that, as a small team of three, we are every bit big enough to change the world.