In their paper ‘Usability Inspection Methods after 15 Years of Research and Practice’ Tasha Hollingsed (Lockheed Martin) and David G. Novick (The University of Texas) describe which usability methods practioners use and how they use them.
They have observed that many usability professionals, in practice, rely on single-perspective methods, typically involving users, or experts, but not both although the latter is more effective.
The research on comparisons of usability assessment methods suggests several lessons for practitioners.
First, while “faster, cheaper” methods such as heuristic evaluation and the pluralistic usability walkthrough can be useful for rapid iteration early in the design cycle, inspection methods cannot fully substitute for the empirical user testing needed before releasing an interface or Website to the public.
Second, empirical methods can also be used early in the development process, via “low-tech” versions of interfaces.
Third, developers often combine multiple inspection methods —heuristic evaluation and the cognitive walkthrough—in the same project so that they obtain better coverage of usability issues.
And fourth, adding multiple perspectives—along dimensions such as the range of stakeholders or kinds of usability problems—appears to improve the effectiveness of inspection methods.
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