Expert ReviewsĮxpert reviews usually expand on heuristic evaluations by assessing the design not only for compliance with heuristics, but also against other known usability guidelines, principles of usability-related fields such as cognitive psychology and human-computer interaction, and the reviewer’s expertise and past experience in the field. In this article we focus on expert reviews. (In contrast, in user testing, you usually want to test broader tasks and avoid taking the study participant directly to the individual feature you’re currently working on.) Another advantage is that it’s possible to review an isolated segment of a design, such as a single dialog box or an exception-handling workflow. In fact, since these reviews are based on inspection, as opposed to actual use by a real user, one can even review a set of specifications or other more abstract versions of a user interface that could not be tested with participants. The distinction between heuristic evaluations and expert reviews is blurry in many organizations, and it’s okay to think of an expert review as a more general version of a heuristic evaluation.ĭesign reviews can be conducted at all stages in the design cycle, provided that there is a prototype with sufficient level of detail.

Expert review: a design review in which a UX expert inspects a system (such as a website or application, or a section therein) to check for possible usability issues.Standalone design critique: a design review in which an in-progress design is analyzed (usually as a group conversation) to determine whether it meets its objectives and provides a good experience.Heuristic evaluation: a type of design review in which the design is evaluated for compliance with a set of heuristics such as Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics.The phrase “design review” is a broad term that encompasses several methods of inspection - in each, the level of inspection varies depending on who is doing the review and the review’s goals. Definition: A design review is a usability-inspection method in which (usually) one reviewer examines a design to identify usability problems.

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