Usability inspection is the name for a set of methods where an evaluator inspects a user interface. This is in contrast to usability testing where the usability of the interface is evaluated by testing it on real users. Usability inspections can generally be used early in the development process by evaluating prototypes or specifications for the system that can't be tested on users. Usability inspection methods are generally considered to be cheaper to implement than testing on users.
Usability inspection methods include:
- Cognitive walkthrough (task-specific)
- Heuristic evaluation (holistic)
- Pluralistic walkthrough
Famous quotes containing the word inspection:
“Utopias are presented for our inspection as a critique of the human state. If they are to be treated as anything but trivial exercises of the imagination. I suggest there is a simple test we can apply.... We must forget the whole paraphernalia of social description, demonstration, expostulation, approbation, condemnation. We have to say to ourselves, “How would I myself live in this proposed society? How long would it be before I went stark staring mad?””
—William Golding (b. 1911)