Heuristic Usability Evaluations
Role: Usability Analyst
Done at: Infosys Technologies Limited, Bangalore
Tasks: Heuristic Evaluation, Cognitive Walkthrough, Competitor Analysis/Benchmarking, Usability Evaluation.
Usability Parameters
UI Categories
UI categories include – Branding, Site Strategy, Navigation, Layout, Wording, Graphics,
Animation, Color, Fonts, Control Elements, Web Standards, Error Handling etc.
Severity Types
Showstoppers – Catastrophic issues that prevent people from accomplishing their goals.
Major Issues – Issues that cause waste of time, increased learning and error rates
Irritants – Minor cosmetic or consistency issues that slow users down slightly / are a minimal violation of usability guidelines
Methodology
Knowledge Transfer
A 45 min – 1 hr initial meeting between usability experts and application stakeholders.
The objective is to allow the usability experts to gain a context of the application to be reviewed.
Agenda includes a discussion on site strategy, goals, understanding of the target audience and a walk-through of key screens to be reviewed.
Review
3-5 usability experts analyze the application and identify usability issues that can run across several front end aspects of the UI. (For example, Navigation, Layout, Detailed Design).
Issues are identified by evaluating the application against current research in the field, industry standards and best practices.
If applicable, brief written design recommendations are provided along with each issue identified. A recommendations document detailing short-term fixes that can be implemented within the context of the applications current design and also and architecture level remedies for more significant re-design.
Documentation and presentation of findings.
1. Scenario/Task-Based Analysis
To determine common tasks and scenarios. These tasks and scenarios to review the existing products or web-based application and document every usability and customer experience issue encountered. Prioritize, and explain the issues, provide visual examples of each issue, and present the findings in a single, easy-to-read document.
Usability Reviews
Review 1: – EZLoans
Review 2: – CVS Peer review
Review 3: – BSD Portal
Review 4: - Tomborg Usability Review
Review 5: - WF model-TestingSuite
Review 6 Quality Portal_ Usability Review
