Five Techniques for Getting Buy-In for Usability Testing (Christine Perfetti):
people only truly comprehend the power of testing once they’ve observed a user interacting with a design
we find that design teams actually save time (and money) when they start testing at the beginning of a project. By finding usability problems very early on, teams prevent themselves from going in the wrong direction
By identifying usability problems early, stakeholders very often see that the technique saves valuable time in the long run.
we suggest that stakeholders sit and observe at least one usability test. This will give team members the opportunity to observe first-hand the information gathered from tests