Your website should be so simple, a drunk person could use it.

You can't test that. I'll do it for you.

I'll get very drunk, and then review your website. I'll send you my screencast; you'll get a video of me, as a new user, and as a designer trying to keep it together. And you'll get a video the morning after (more or less) - so I can recap what I might have messed up when drunk, and apologize.

I am a UX professional and full stack developer. I've been doing this for a long time. Here is my website, my github, and my twitter.

One of the core tenets of UX is that you've got to design like "the user is drunk." Any feature of your site has to be able to be used by someone who could be drunk - because, invariably, the user will mess it up otherwise. Wonderful idea. The thing is, it is hard to test.

I and a lot of beer will test this for you.

Let's do it!





Contact: richard@theuserisdrunk.com

Twitter: @theuserisdrunk

I've written a blogpost about the ethical ramifications of this service, here: The User Has Sobered Up.

Press:

Shopify: 10 Things I Learned About UX By Being Drunk.

Gizmodo: I Paid a UX Expert $100 to Get Drunk and Evaluate Gizmodo's Design.

Tech.co: Here’s Why It’s Important to Design Like the User is Drunk.

Fastcodesign: Reviewing UX Designs While Drunk Makes Way More Sense Than You Think.

Hubspot: This Guy Got Drunk and Critiqued Our Website. Here's What He Had to Say.

Austin Knight (Hubspot): UX insights from a drunk guy.

PULS: Betrunkener Homepagetester.

VWO: Beer, Tequila and the World’s Easiest A/B Testing Tool: Drunk Review of VWO.

EConsultancy:The Virtues of User Testing Under the Influence.

TFMAInsights: What Users Do Drunk: Taking a Squiffy Look at Your Website

Entwickler.de: Bechern für bessere UX – Testen mit Promille

CrossBrowserTesting: The Unexpected Value of a Professional Developer Drunk Testing Your Web Design

FAQ:

• Will you actually do this? Yes.

• Can I pay you more to choose what you drink? Very yes.

• Will you post your screencasts publicly? Yes.

• Is this your only job? No. This website is very much on the side, with no major ambitions for it.

• Did you set up the user is my mom too? Yes! Check it out.

• Wasn't this cheaper earlier? Yes. Raising my prices is my way of throttling the amount of jobs.

• What's your turn around time? I don't schedule drinking sessions for the next day, and sometimes not for the weekend. I've been doing the User is Drunk for years, now; and while the initial few months were a heady ride, I have a much more sober relationship to alcohol than I used to. One of the things I learned is that my review will be worse than useless if I am not having a good time the night I review it. I'll feel bad for underperforming, you'll feel bad for having a stressed, depressed drunkard on the line, and no one's knowledge of UX and the world is improved. So, I've made a few rules. One: I never drink alone. That means I need to ask friends whether they're up for a night out. I normally pay for their drinks, too. Two: I never schedule in a rush. That means that I now commit to a general two-week turnaround, but it can be longer than that, at times, and there's nothing I'm willing to do about it to make it faster.

• What do you need to know? I only need the URL. I don't want to know about your business, your website, or what you think could be improved before hand - because the newness of looking at your website without knowing those things, while drunk, is something I can't replicate later. That having been said, letting me know that you want me to try signing up, or buying something, is totally OK. Send along up to five or so instructions if you have them. My review will generally be around 20 minutes long while drunk. If you want more than that, let me know, and we can probably work something out for a longer review, although I'll try to weigh whether or not I can still see the site for the first time without knowing a lot of the information you have. Sometimes (rarely) two sessions makes sense in these cases.

• Serious: what about alcoholism? Addictive drinking is a real issue. I intend to drink responsibly. I have close friends checking in with me regularly to make sure this doesn't become a problem. I limit the number of clients and schedule these once a month, at most.