How to carry out a usability expert review (Udemy.com)

Learn how to find and fix usability and user experience bloopers in web, software and mobile user interfaces.

Created by: David Travis

Produced in 2014

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What you will learn

  • Appreciate the difference between a usability inspection and someone's personal opinion.
  • Learn and practice some quick techniques for carrying out usability reviews of prototypes and finished products.
  • Apply Jakob Nielsen's "heuristic evaluation" technique to software, products and web sites.
  • Compare Nielsen's heuristics with other sets of guidelines, like ISO's 7 dialogue principles, Shniederman's 8 golden rules of dialog design and Tog's 16 principles of interaction design
  • Uncover the elements of your design that lead new users to make errors, using the task-based "cognitive walkthrough" method.

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Quality Score

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Overall Score : 98 / 100

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Course Description

Learn how to carry out one of the most in-demand user experience techniques the Usability Expert Review. Knowing how to competently carry out an expert review is a skill that should be in every UX consultant's toolbox. Expert reviews are a great way to identify "usability bloopers" with a product or web site. They are quick, cost-effective and provide an immediate sanity check for the design. Expert reviews are also an ideal way to ensure that a product or web site will meet usability standards. But many people find it difficult to identify specific usability issues from generic usability heuristics. Beginners also find it hard to derive action-oriented recommendations that can be passed to the design team. This seminar reveals the practitioner secrets behind expert reviews and will teach you how to think like a usability expert.
  • Appreciate the difference between a usability inspection and someone's personal opinion.
  • Learn and practice some quick techniques for carrying out usability reviews of prototypes and finished products.
  • Apply Jakob Nielsen's heuristic evaluation technique to software, products and web sites.
  • Compare Nielsen's heuristics with other sets of guidelines, like ISO's 7 dialogue principles, Shniederman's 8 golden rules of dialog design and Tog's 16 principles of interaction design
  • Uncover the elements of your design that lead new users to make errors, using the task-based cognitive walkthrough method.
As well as a set of comprehensive notes, you'll download detailed usability checklists and workbooks to help you carry out the most valuable techniques: the Heuristic Evaluation and the Cognitive Walkthrough. You'll also download an expert review reporting template in PowerPoint and Keynote format that you can re-brand and use to report back the results of your own expert reviews. - All of the video lectures and worksheets are download-enabled. If you have a slow internet connection, or want to take this course with you on your laptop, smartphone or other portable device, sign up and download all the videos and other course materials now. - Every lecture has been fully transcribed as a text document. This is useful if English isn't your native language or if you just want a readable and searchable version of the course. - On completion of the training, you will receive a certificate of completion and be eligible for free, e-mail-based, refresher training. Who this course is for:
  • This seminar is for you if you are looking for practical, cost-effective methods to evaluate designs.
  • This is an in-depth course in one area of user experience and is most effective for delegates who have day-to-day responsibility for ensuring usability within their organisation.
  • Common job titles include web designer, software designer, user interface designer, user experience designer and usability practitioner.

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Instructor Details

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I'm on a mission to create more user experience professionals.
Perhaps you'd like a job in user experience. Or maybe you already work in the field but you've never had any formal training. Or maybe you want to improve your skills in one specific area, like usability testing or expert reviews. I've turned thousands of people into user experience designers and researchers and now you can join their ranks by taking my courses on Udemy.
You're probably curious about my background. At 18, I appeared as an extra in the film "Quadrophenia" alongside Sting and Ray Winstone. Despite a critically-acclaimed performance lasting 5 seconds, follow-up offers from Hollywood failed to arrive so I turned to psychology where I gained a BSc and a PhD. Since 1989 I've worked in the fields of human factors, usability and user experience and I've published three books on usability. I'm now a User Experience Strategist at Userfocus, a consultancy specialising in user experience. I'm also an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society, a Chartered Psychologist and a member of the User Experience Professionals Association. I'm no longer in contact with Sting or Ray Winstone, whose career trajectories have been somewhat different.
I've provided usability support to top brands like HP, Microsoft, Whirlpool, Orange, Skype, eBay and Yahoo! and I've also consulted with public sector organisations like The Greater London Authority, Her Majesty

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Reviews

4.9

50 total reviews

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By Pawel Jurdeczka

It’s the most comprehensive and straightforward UX training I’ve ever taken! The real aces of this course are the practical activities which are well combined with necessary theory. Such simplicity and accuracy of explanations can be reached only by someone who knows the topic in and out and is on the level of conscious competence. Pleasure to be taught by Dr Travis!

The course is worth every penny! I highly recommend it!

By Saladin A

This is the BEST course on UX I have taken in a very long time. If you crave quality then stick with Dr. Travis. He has a virtual seat for any UX novice or pro. The content is very easy to consume, teaches practical application, and there are plenty of real world examples. So settle in and get ready to learn at your own pace... Once I started I simply couldn't stop... and at the end I found a wonderful new beginning.

By Eric Hind

All good so far, appreciate the real-world examples very much; the universe is not just about apps and having the perspective of UX review from physical as well as mobile and desktops is going to be advantageous to me in the long run.

By Udita Sharma

Extremely helpful!!

The course constitutes very good examples and the ways of implementing the theoritical knowledge.

By Robert Singer

An excellently presented practical guide to expert reviews that contains clear and thorough explanations of each technique complete with hands on activities that reinforce the principles, useful printable checklists for field use reference, and tactful approaches for explaining to your client that some things need to be fixed. All of this in Dr. Travis' effective lecture style of engaging his students with real world and at times humorous examples to drive the lesson home. Highly recommended.

By Nicola Barker

New in the Usability field and this course really helped me with the methodology on how to go about an Expert Review. Easy and informative.

By Mike Woollard

This is the course every User Researcher (to be) has to follow, David is really pragmatic and explain the walkthrough very clearly.

By Anna

Thanks for this course . I would say sometimes it is too complicated about simple things. A lot references for out dated sources, samples on the interfaces of 5 years old which nowadays are not valid anymore. But in general the course is not bad, at least some templates you might use while evaluating the product and some advices about the reports.

By Sergey Protopopov

David create excellent course for learning how to become usability expert. After passed it you want to use in pratcice getting knowledge

By Patrizio Laurito

The course guides you through the review process step by step, is very informative, includes very helpful assignments and great advice.

By Andrew Brien

As an experienced Business Analyst I was surprised how little I understood about usability reviews! This is a great course, highly detailed and easy to understand. I’ve gained a better understanding of the basics, a better more rounded understanding of the whole process. The activities really helped. This is my third course from David, and I can say his courses are very high quality with excellent downloadable support material.

By Huining Liu

Overall a very great course for anyone who wants go deep in how to do usability evaluations. I've learned more in depth knowledge and practical techniques of nielson's heuristics and cognitive walkthrough, which was my initial goal. And I'm happy that I've learned even more about ISO principles and other principles as well.

I love all the worksheets provided, they are a great starting point to work on my own worksheets! Thanks a lot for those!

My only, and a minor complaint is that at the beginning of the course, when instructor went though nielson's heuristics, the pace was a little fast. I do understand that it was an overview and more deeper explanation would follow, but I still hope the beginning intro can slow down a little bit. To compare, the pace when introducing cognitive walkthrough was great.

That's it! Thanks Dr Travis for the course again! I cannot wait to apply what I learned to my work now : )