Usability Evaluation
Usability evaluation examines how effectively and efficiently people can work with your software, and how well it supports their needs. You can inspect a design against usability principles, observe people using it, or use analytics to identify patterns that need further investigation. These approaches provide different kinds of evidence and can be used together.
This section covers testing with users and two forms of inspection: a general heuristic review, useful for finding and prioritising defects, and Usability Harmonics, which provides a more detailed framework for examining complex professional software. Both inspections can be used by a team of one.
An inspection draws on the evaluator’s judgement. Usability testing involves observing representative users attempting tasks. An inspection can help you decide what to investigate with users; testing can then establish whether the difficulties you anticipated occur in practice.
As ever, take what works for you, leave what doesn't.
Testing with Users​
Testing with Users covers realistic briefs, participant selection, output quality, assistance and later tests of learning. Use it to investigate a proposed design or a difficulty found during an inspection.
General Heuristic Review​
A general heuristic review uses established principles to identify common usability problems. It is an accessible starting point when you need a list of defects to investigate and fix. The review can be brief or thorough, depending on its scope and the experience of the evaluators.
Usability Harmonics​
Usability Harmonics is a form of heuristic evaluation tailored to non-linear, open ended software like DCCs. It can also produce a list of defects, but its purpose extends beyond finding things to fix. It helps you trace difficulties back to the design decisions that produced them, examine the trade-offs involved, and recognise decisions that worked well. The evaluation therefore becomes a way to improve both the software and your judgement as a designer.
Choosing a Review​
Choose the depth of review that suits the question. A general review is a useful starting point for identifying common usability problems. Use Harmonics when you need to understand how the design supports or hinders a workflow, and what that teaches you about future work.
You can use either approach on its own, or use a general review to identify problems that warrant a closer Harmonics review. The distinction is one of emphasis and depth: both approaches can find defects and inform design decisions, while Harmonics gives you a more detailed vocabulary for examining the relationships behind them.