Expert Usability Evaluation
Based on a best practices model, an expert usability evaluation is a useful tool when speed is critical, budgets are low or new product concepts need quick validation before further resources are committed. Expert usability evaluations also play a key role in competitive analysis by allowing us to quickly compare your product or service performance against that of your competitors.
Timing
Expert usability evaluations are often a part of the Assessment phase and can help determine the need for primary usability testing using actual usability test participants. However, expert usability evaluations can also be performed throughout the Visioning and iDesign stage and even beyond during the development process. These usability evaluations can be performed on existing products and services as well as those still in design concept, and regardless of whether they are software, physical products, processes or web sites.
Methodology
In conducting an expert usability evaluation, we use a task-based approach. The task-based approach ensures that we 'walk in the shoes of the users' and thereby cover the usability aspects of the web site, product or service that are central to the completion of critical or frequent tasks. An expert usability evaluation identifies possible issues by comparing the interaction design of your product or service to design best practices and industry standards.
If you only want expert evaluation at this point, we would still sit down with you and go through a shortened Discovery phase to understand your goals and those of your end users. Specifically, we would
- Confirm our understanding of the product or service's intent and target users including their characteristics, expectations and objectives,
- Understand how the success of the product or service is being measured,
- Understand the product or service's history and the rationale for the current design,
- Review the usability guidelines,
- Identify a range of frequent and/or critical tasks that the users will expect to complete, and
- Define the prioritization criteria to be used for issues and recommendations (e.g. critical, major, minor).
With this information, one of our user interaction experts completes the task-based review using our usability checklist. The checklist is based on industry standards and our own experience designing and evaluating web sites, applications, processes and physical products. The evaluator repeats the user tasks making notes of findings against the relevant checkpoints in the checklist. Design principles included in the checklist are:
- navigation,
- task flow,
- information organization and presentation,
- simplicity,
- user control,
- error avoidance,
- consistency,
- flexibility,
- cognitive load,
- language / terminology, and
- shortcuts for experienced users.
The evaluator and one of our user interaction architects step back and look to identify the root causes of any issues that were uncovered and identify possible design recommendations that would eliminate or alleviate the problems. These findings and recommendations are prioritized according to the prioritization scheme.
Benefits
- Validates the design strategies and sets the foundation for future product development by identifying potential issues early.
- Helps you understand and resolve initial functionality, content and design issues.
- Less costly and faster to complete than full experience (usability) testing
- Allows for more iterations and on-going testing due to lower cost and faster timelines
Deliverables
The results of the review are presented in a PowerPoint presentation in a working session that ensures the accuracy of the evaluation as well as facilitates the transfer of knowledge to the development team. Following the working session, we will deliver the final report including prioritized recommendations.