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Expert Usability Review vs Usability Testing

One question we're often asked will be which method is best: usability testing or expert usability reviews? Well, should they were sports cars, expert usability reviews might be a Porsche (fairly decent car and better than no car at a lot of), but usability testing would end up being in a different league, namely Formula 1.

So, what'utes the difference?

- A great expert usability review is when a usability specialist inspects a website to identify potential usability issues

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

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

- Locate and prioritise usability problems

- Evaluate designs in the context of tasks

Carry out they will come across the same problems?

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

Had you been to transport out a very expert usability review before conducting usability testing, and compare the two sets of findings, you can observe just how the issues you found in comparison with their real experiences. Did you discover a lot of the problems? Which kinds did you overlook? Which kinds that you thought might always be issues switched out not to always be? This unique will provide you a good feel for exactly how expert usability reviews hold up toward usability testing.

Often, expert reviews will:

- Ignore usability issues that arise during usability testing

- Locate some issues that usability testing didn'capital t

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

And that's the problem. Regardless of how good a helpful expert you are if you just count while on an expert usability review you'll come across different types of issues and overlook some potentially serious products.

Consider the case of a 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 that triggered participants to pass comments like "That'utes just so insensitive!" and "I wouldn'big t use this web site anymore". And just about all because of the seemingly benign bit of banner advertising for a local fitness center placed next to a good post about breasts serving. A reviewer would have difficulty predicting the indignant reaction of brand-new mothers who felt the site was rubbing their nostril in it. In any case there would end up being little potential for them going everywhere near a health club with a newborn.

How much overlap perhaps there is between expert usability reviews & usability testing?

Obviously, there is some overlap in the problems present in both expert usability reviews and usability testing. Research executed by Fu, Salvendy and Turley in 2002 estimated this kind of to end up being around 41%. Not as high since you might expect. Interestingly, expert usability reviews tend to discover far more troubles in comparison with usability testing. But it'utes quality over variety.

Expert usability reviews are good...

Expert usability reviews are more common than usability testing mainly because these people're more affordable and quicker to carry out. Typically, it'll only have a number of days and nights to inspect a site and write a report and because you don'capital t need to pay labs nor recruit people, charges are significantly cheaper. Due to this, that they're often preferred to usability testing, certain when time and budget are squeezed.

There are anyhow some pitfalls. For a start, a lot depends on the reviewer'utes level of experience. No two usability experts will locate exactly the same issues so the method is actually furthermore available to practitioner variation. The biggest problem nevertheless is simply that they will occasionally ignore the real troubles that cause users to fail tasks. This might be specifically true once the customers seems to have a particular skill set. For illustration, a helpful accountant may always be better placed to diagnose selected types of issues related to online accountancy tasks than a non-accountant reviewer.

...But usability testing is truly da Daddy!

Usability testing takes far more time to program and organise and is much more expensive also - recruiting and incentivising people through a audience may be costly. But it's definitely worth the effort! The results provide a truer picture from the real troubles people encounter because that they're derived coming from real consumers in the first place.

It'ersus inconceivable exactly how sites go stay without checking to determine that that they're actually usable. It'utes like building an automobile but not test driving it. "All right, we've built this kind of great website. Umm, well no, we've not looked at to determine if people can play with it yet. But don'testosterone worry because most the links function and the pages download quickly."

Another plus of usability testing is truly that there'ersus significantly less conjecture and feedback comes straight through the horse'utes mouth. Movies of user sessions in particular, offers a powerful persuasion resource for reluctant stakeholders. It's hard to argue with recordings of people in tears of frustration.

Use real users and accept no substitute!

Both expert usability reviews and usability testing have their time and place. In practice, people often use expert usability reviews early on straighten way up their design in arrangements for usability testing. (Indeed this is critical for accessibility testing, since it's a waste of your time to recruit and test subscribers who can'n even get into your site in the first place.)

Whilst a helpful expert usability review will be better than nothing, it'utes still vital to serve your website in front of people since early since possible way too, prefer to than leaving it also late. Key elements such since site structure and navigation should be assessed with surfers at the original opportunity. Otherwise you risk having your site considerably overhauled at a late stage.

Ultimately, the key should be to appreciate that expert usability reviews and usability testing are different beasts. The most efficient approach should be to try and integrate both techniques. Remember though, you must test your site with real surfers - accept no substitute! http://www.cactusteachers.com/member/9555/