Who are the stakeholders?

As the word implies, a stakeholder is anyone that has a stake in the interface that is being tested. Stakeholders can include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Upper management (especially for new products)
• The product manager and owner of the interface
• The engineering and development team
• The UX team
• The design team
• The marketing team
• The sales team

In a small company or a company that is new to usability testing, the stakeholders can be virtually anyone within that company: the CEO, a UX contractor, product management, and even the quality assurance team. In larger companies, especially those with more experience in usability testing, the stakeholders are often representatives of the in-house UX and UI teams or the product owner, if the company does not have a dedicated UX team.

Whether or not each of these potential stakeholders needs to be involved will be determined by the UX researcher, and is very specific to each company.