Website Usability Guidelines

Usability Test Evaluations

Follow these usability recommendations:

What is an Usability Evaluation? Usability Evaluation is an evaluation by an expert and does not include users to test the website. An example of an Usability Evaluation is a heuristic (expert) evaluation.

How do usability tests differ from Usability Evaluations? Usability tests always include test participants. Usability Evaluations usually do not. Usability testing is the only way to know if the website actually has problems that keep people from having a successful and satisfying experience. Of course, to have a useful usability test, the test participants must be representative of the people who use or will use the website.

Generally, we are not interested in what testers think will be a problem. We want it demonstrated by having one or more users actually struggle with some aspect of the site.

This is the true value of a usability test: It provides an opportunity for the site to allow users to succeed, succeed with difficulty, or totally fail. There is no guessing as to whether a scenario will be difficult to complete because participants (typical users) will succeed (or not), thus demonstrating that the website does or does not work for them.

Which should you rely on more:

Usability Evaluation or Usability Test? The results of a usability evaluation may or may not be consistent with the results of a usability test. In a usability evaluation, you are predicting the problems or successes that users will have with the website. An usability test with representative users tells you whether your predictions are valid.

When should you do an Usability Evaluation? You can do a usability evaluation as soon as you have a prototype to evaluate. Many usability professionals first do a usability evaluation and then follow it up with a usability test. They use the results of the evaluation to develop hypotheses about what could be serious problems and then develop the usability test around those hypotheses.