How to Get Usability Data in a Startup Environment

When I first started out, we didn't have access to a lot of great data. So I ended up using a lot of existing research. Turns out there is a lot of reasonably applicable and analogous cognitive psychology research you can apply to most things - especially user experience. We would also do a lot with budget usability. The first usability test that we did here would be me sending to sumarket and say $20 free T shirts and pizza show up at Gates at noon on Saturday. And just getting users in, putting products in front of them, and seeing what they all do.