Expert Usability Reviews and Usability Audits

Expert usability reviews or usability audits are a valuable part of our usability strategy which aims to:

• improve customer satisfaction
• increase your sales
• reduce your development times and costs.

Using our own checklists based on industry recognised usability standards and best practice, our experts can review your design to identify a wide range of problems including navigation and content which are likely to reduce usability and cause users problems.  Expert usability reviews are particularly cost effective when designs are at an early stage.

Benefits

• Quick and low cost - usability expert reviews can take as little as one day
• Identify and fix major usability and accessibility issues early in design
  • before modifications become expensive
  • before user testing
• Provide quick feedback on design choices
• Good for tracking whether changes in design have improved usability or accessibility
• Allow comparison with
  • current best practice
  • internal or other standards
  • existing or competitor products.

Our approach

• Based on industry best practice and international usability standards - which we helped develop
• Focused on user and task profiles - agreed with you in advance
• Structured usability checklists to identify key issues and allow comparison of results
• Experienced usability assessors - familiar with a range of products and systems
• Clear, straightforward results presented in an easy to use format
• Practical recommendations - we will continue to work with you to improve your design.

Typical projects

• Usability and accessibility review of the Comic Relief website
• 'Snapshot' usability and accessibility review of an airline booking website compared to a competitors, reputedly better, website (findings highlighted areas for improvement in our client's site but also revealed that competitor's site had weaknesses)
• Usability review of integrated publishing system for the Financial Times carried out at different stages of the development to track improvements to design
• Comparing the experience of 'getting a travel insurance quote' from our client, LV=, and three competitors' websites.

What do our clients say?

The methodology Systems Concepts employed broke the analysis of our website into different areas, providing clear explanations for each problem area with examples and recommendations for making improvements.  This approach was very clear and easy to understand and also helped us to build knowledge for future projects.

Working with System Concepts provided us with a fresh approach, highlighting usability and accessibility problems that we would not otherwise have considered.  Due to their input, we addressed many of these for Red Nose Day and are already building on these insights and working with Systems Concept’s again for our next big fundraising event, Sport Relief.

Rachel Moriarty, Project Manager within Comic Relief’s new media team

Systems Concepts' analysis was exactly what we were looking for.  Their expert review offered insights into all dimensions of our software.  The recommendations were practical and easy to turn into development requirements.  Understanding how we compared with competitor products meant that we could prioritise these developments to make most headway on our market.

Rich Cole, Product Manager at O2

For more information on any of our services, please contact us