Also known as expert evaluation. It is used to identify user problems. Experts analyze whether a user interface follows a list of usability heuristics.
1. Establish a list of panel experts, recruit and invite them to a location.
2. Select a moderator and introduce the topic of the session, establish a set of evaluative criteria.
3. Hand out current designs that are similar to your design problem. Each expert evaluates the interface individually, observe the behaviour of the experts and take notes.
4. Collect and aggregate all the results, cluster them in topics, similarities and differences.
5. Identify problems, opportunities and difficulties and list them in a report.
WHEN
Early in the design process.
WHY
Experts will have insights that someone who has little knowledge of the topic, might miss.
NOTE!
Experts might have professional bias and/ or strong opinions.
OUTPUT
Knowledge based on experience in the eld from the experts. List of problems, sorted on priority.
Next
Brainstorm on ways to solve the problems that have been identified.
Reference
NIELSEN, Jakob; MOLICH, Rolf. Heuristic evaluation of user interfaces. In:Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems. ACM, 1990. p. 249-256./ KANTNER, Laurie; ROSENBAUM, Stephanie. Usability studies of WWW sites: heuristic evaluation vs. laboratory testing. In: Proceedings of the 15th annual international conference on Computer documentation. ACM, 1997. p. 153-160./