Usability evaluations
A user experience evaluation lets you take full advantage of our years of expertise. It does not involve testing with real users. Instead, usability experts from User Vision draw on their experience of watching hundreds of users to review websites, software and products, and apply established best practice principles, or ‘heuristics’, in their evaluation.
These principles are based on years of research by leading web and software usability professionals determining what constitutes a usable system. The structured analysis based on this method quickly reveals the outstanding usability issues.
Usability evaluations: The benefits
User experience evaluations give you quick results at low cost. As no test participants are required, we can conduct an evaluation at short notice and report results quickly for the design team to take action - we have been known to turn around urgent evaluations in under a day.
This approach is very effective and produces valuable results in any step of the design process. We can perform this evaluation early in the design process using paper mock-ups, wire frames or prototypes to ensure that problems are caught before they are built into the design. This method is also ideal for the remote evaluation of live websites, often as the first step to a redesign. Our usability case study for Britannia Building Society shows how this was successfully undertaken for them. You may also like to read some of articles about this method of working, such as Lessons in best practice usability testing and evaluation and our review of the 6 political party websites in the run up to the 2005 general election.
User experience evaluations: The report
When we have completed your user experience evaluation, you will receive a detailed report that will include:
- A prioritised list of usability problems
- Specific redesign recommendations for each problem identified
- Screen captures to illustrate the main points
Once you’ve had a chance to absorb the results, we are available to discuss each identified usability problem and recommendation with you to ensure you know how to implement each change to best effect. We can also present the recommendations to you and your development team.
Our expert usability evaluations compliment many of our other services and are often conducted in conjunction with an accessibility audit, information architecture analysis and usability testing. Many of our clients have used this service as a first step to redesigning their site or in helping to assess a new design, including HSBC, the Department of Trade & Industry, Dell Computers and Intelligent Finance.
Contact User Vision to discuss your requirements and obtain a no obligation quotation.