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Expert Usability Review vs Usability Testing

One question we're often asked is actually which method is best: usability testing or expert usability reviews? Well, if they were sports cars, expert usability reviews might be a Porsche (pretty decent car and better than no car at every single one), but usability testing would always be in a different league, namely Formula 1.

So, what's the difference?

- An expert usability review is when a usability specialist inspects a website to identify potential usability troubles

- Usability testing involves getting people coming from the market to evaluate your site whilst performing tasks

These people're quite similar in many ways in that both:

- Discover and prioritise usability difficulties

- Evaluate designs in the context of tasks

Carry out they locate the same symptoms?

The answer depends on how precisely you measure it, on balance no, not reliably. Most of the time, expert usability reviews tend to discover high level breaches of design rules and consistency. Usability testing will be better at finding issues related to special domain knowledge and task flows.

If you were to carry out the expert usability review before conducting usability testing, and compare the 2 sets of findings, you will see just how the issues you found compared to their real experiences. Did you discover a lot of the issues? Which versions did you ignore? Which kinds that you simply thought might always be issues turned out not to become? This unique will offer you a good feel for just how expert usability reviews keep up against usability testing.

Often, expert reviews will:

- Ignore usability issues that arise during usability testing

- Locate some issues that usability testing didn'n

- Report false alarms (i.elizabeth. not real issues)

Knowning that'ersus the problem. Regardless how good the expert you are if you just really rely with an expert usability review you'll come across different types of issues and overlook some potentially serious products.

Consider the case of the health website aimed specifically at brand-new mums. The expert usability review found plenty of great issues, but might have missed the main killer one which caused participants to pass comments like "That's just so insensitive!" and "I wouldn'n use this site anymore". And all because of a seemingly benign bit of banner advertising for a the nearest health club placed next to a very post about breast feeding. A reviewer would have difficulty predicting the indignant reaction of brand new mothers who felt the site has been rubbing their nasal area in it. In fact there would end up being little potential for them going anywhere near a fitness center with a newborn.

Just how much overlap can there be between expert usability reviews & usability testing?

Obviously, there is actually some overlap in the issues within both expert usability reviews and usability testing. Research executed by Fu, Salvendy and Turley in 2002 estimated it to become surrounding 41%. Not since high like you might expect. Interestingly, expert usability reviews tend to find much more difficulties when compared with usability testing. But it'ersus quality over variety.

Expert usability reviews are good...

Expert usability reviews will be more common than usability testing easily because these people're less expensive and quicker to do. Typically, it'll only have a few times to inspect a site and write a report and because you don'n need to use labs nor recruit customers, charges are significantly low-priced. For this reason, they're often desired to usability testing, specifically when time and budget are squeezed.

There are however some pitfalls. For a start, a lot depends on the reviewer'ersus level of experience. No two usability experts will discover exactly the same issues so the method will be furthermore available to practitioner variation. The leading problem however will be that they will at times miss the real symptoms that cause users to fail tasks. This specific might be particularly correct once the potential audience has a particular skill set. For instance, an accountant may end up being better placed to diagnose selected forms of issues related to online accountancy tasks than a non-accountant reviewer.

...But usability testing is actually da Daddy!

Usability testing takes much more time to plan and organise and will be far more expensive way too - recruiting and incentivising people coming from a market may be costly. But it'utes definitely worth the effort! The outcome provide a truer picture with the real difficulties people encounter because these people're derived coming from real consumers in the first place.

It'utes inconceivable exactly how sites go are living without checking to see that they will're actually usable. It'utes like building a car but not test driving it. "Indeed, we've built this great website. Umm, well no, we've not examined to determine if people can work with it yet. But don'capital t worry because almost all the links work and the pages download quickly."

Another edge of usability testing is actually that there's significantly less conjecture and feedback comes straight through the horse'ersus mouth. Vids of user sessions in particular, can offer a powerful persuasion utility for reluctant stakeholders. It'utes hard to argue with recordings of people in tears of frustration.

Use real people and accept no substitute!

Both expert usability reviews and usability testing have their time and place. In training, people often use expert usability reviews early again to straighten way up their design in arrangements for usability testing. (Indeed this is definitely critical for accessibility testing, since it'ersus a waste of your energy to recruit and test surfers who can't even get into your site in the first place.)

Whilst an expert usability review is truly better than nothing, it'utes still vital to apply your site in front of people while early when probable as well, prefer to than leaving it also late. Key elements this kind of as site structure and navigation should be assessed with consumers at the most well-known opportunity. Otherwise you risk having your website completely overhauled at a late stage.

Ultimately, the key is always to appreciate that expert usability reviews and usability testing are different beasts. The top approach is always to try and integrate both techniques. Remember though, you must test your site with real subscribers - accept no substitute! http://playgrounder.com/member/9675/