User Pathways

So you haven’t much time. The client hasn’t any budget. But being a conscientious UX professional you need to ensure that certain criteria are being met on a site that is due for a refresh. What can you do to present a coherent study of its failings, before the management team assign budget?

Recently, I looked at a site, studied why their site was failing and why it needed a design rethink. I owe this to James Kalbach and Jakob Nielsen respectively. They both have different approaches to looking at the usability of sites but I found the checklist approach a nice and easy sense check of what the site does well and what it fails in doing. Its clear for the cheque writers to see at a glance what is wrong, and it gives them an indication of where their cash needs spending.

Here is a list to download, hope it works for you and its a combination of Nielsen and Kalbach’s thinking on usability heuristics. If you are at the coal face of web design and development I urge you to run this check before making fundamental changes. It could save you time, and the user’s, and the company money in the long run…

Have a look at this usability checklist example file