Usability Methods In Interface stage design: Expert Review A Software Article
The usability method expert review is quite similar to the method heuristic evaluations. A few usability experts gather around an interface or website and review all pages, controls and stage design patterns. But in contrast to a heuristic evaluation, they are completely free in their approach (okay, they should try to slip into the shoes of a potential user) of how to check, review and judge the website with all its features and workflows.How to conduct an Expert ReviewIn an expert review, usually 2 to 5 usability consultants (the reality looks quite different where those consultants might be fellow stage designer with an avocation in user centered stage design) judge the single pages, workflows (click paths) and the overall structure of a websiteinterface, write down positive and negative annotations and prioritize them by impact on the user experience (UX). Finally a full usability report is compiled that presents actionable advice how to improve the usability sometimes even extended by alternative stage design solutions. Advantages of an Expert Review compared to other Usability MethodsAs an information architect or webinteraction stage designer, you will probably know your peers and can easily gather 5 fellow stage designers to give feedback on your site in an expert review. This will not give you the 100% of an expert review with real usability consultants, but makes it rather cost effective.Since there is no installation or sophisticated lab technology required, it is really easy to implement and an expert review can therefore be obtained very early on in the stage design and planning process of a project. Applying expert reviews and evaluating stage design concepts from the professional point of view with a background of long experience in the field, will help you to get the external view into your stage design concepts and lead to better results, avoiding re-stage designing of already detailed screenshots or even re-programming of code. Another positive aspect of expert reviews compared to heuristic evaluations is the fact that it is more open than heuristic evaluations, therefore getting positive and negative feedback on the stage designconcept. Although an expert review, of course, does not cover 100% of the users view, studies have shown that around 90% of all usability bugs on a website can be found.Limitations of Expert ReviewsWhen performing expert reviews with fellow stage designers, instead of experienced usability consultants you trade expertise for feasibility. Although experienced in the field of web and interface stage design, fellow stage designers as reviewers do not have the wide perspective and specialized experience of usability consultants – but thats okay and much better than not testing at all.An expert review is a purely qualitative usability method and can only provide a guide line based on usability best practices and experience but does not substitute (rather complement) quantitative user tracking when the project is finally live.Conclusion about the Usability Method Expert ReviewExpert reviews are the perfect usability method for testing and reviewing stage design concepts with a broad perspective. Expert reviews can be applied in a very early stage stage design of a project (e.g. on a wireframe basis), thus positive and negative feedback comes at the right time (before detailed stage design or even programming has started). With an expert review you collect a lot of helpful insights to create customer centric stage design with rather limited effort. Readings and Recommendations To perfectly enable expert reviews in an early stage stage design of your project, interfaces can be sketched with a wireframing tool . Some of them even have integrated expert review modules with which you can conduct an expert review by the click of a button. Just google for things like “usability wireframe tool and get even better results when it comes to user centric web stage design!