I ran a 45 minute workshop on 'lightweight usability testing' at dev8D, an event for (IT) developers in the UK's higher education sector. From the abstract:
"Usability doesn't have to be a drag, and user testing doesn't have to take months and a cast of thousands. Following the principle that 'any user testing is better than no user testing', lightweight usability is based on the idea that all you need to produce useful test results to improve your software is a bit of planning and a couple of hours.
In this session you will learn to plan and run a lightweight usability test based on a project you've worked on. At the end of the workshop we'll run a live usability test based on participant's examples from the workshop."