Predicting future behavior

Other customers will launch a usability study in order to understand the future behavior of their users, as follows:

• "Are people willing to use the service?"
• "Would people recommend the app, or not?"
• "Would people pay for the service?"

We would never accept this as the sole goal of a usability study, because peoples' future behavior is more accurately measured by their past habits than by their predictions. If a person regularly uses a video streaming app on their mobile phone, they are more likely to use a newly introduced video streaming app than someone who has never done so before. Even though this is not a good goal for a usability study, we still include these questions in the study, because they indicate a tendency. If participants can project themselves using a given product or even paying for it, then they probably think it is of interest to them and has value which is relevant feedback.