User Experience Foundations

11 USABILITY EVALUATION

The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Old English saying

INTRODUCTION

This chapter describes how to assess the usability of a product, service or system. There are two ways of evaluating the usability of a system: usability inspection and usability testing. While usability testing involves having users work with the product or prototype and attempt to carry out tasks, usability inspection can be carried out by one or more individuals within the design team, without needing to involve any test participants.

We start by looking at ways in which a single person can inspect a system and draw conclusions about its usability. In particular, we consider guidelines such as Jakob Nielsen’s (1993) usability heuristics. ...