Don’t have the budget or time for a typical Usability Test? 

Consider a Heuristic Evaluation, also known as an “Expert Review”.

As usability experts, we can evaluate a product without recruiting users, providing you with a fast, relatively inexpensive source of data.  Heuristic evaluations can be performed early, even before prototypes are available, and they can be more comprehensive.  Since usability tests rely on specific tasks, not all aspects of the user interface are tested, whereas heuristic evaluations cover all aspects of the interface.

A heuristic evaluation can be very effective in and of itself, especially if your resources don’t allow for formal usability testing.  Optimally, heuristic evaluations are one step in a more comprehensive usability effort, to collect preliminary information prior to formal usability testing. 

Heuristic evaluations are also useful in the case of competitive products.  Conducting a formal usability test with each of your competitor’s products can get very expensive very quickly.  However, a series of competitive heuristic evaluations can provide you with objective feedback of specific product characteristics, such as installation or set up, key usage tasks, and even customer support.

We have been hired to perform competitive evaluations of web sites, software, and products such as digital cameras, office machines, and peripherals.

Email: drw@twsinc.com