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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?
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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
Tags: heuristic tests, Jakob Nielsen, James Kalbach, usability budget, usability review
Looks good, thanks. Do you have a blank version for download?
Hi. I’ve uploaded it to this server as a Word document….
http://www.kelwaydesign.com/checklist/site-evaluation-checklist-kalbach-nielsen.doc
James,
This is great. I was working on something similar. I may just steal yours.
Be my guest! Its a mix of both James Kalbach and Jakob Nielsen’s techniques for a good quick test. Its surprising how quickly you can do it going down the list…
[...] Heuristic evaluation checklist – offers the ability to look at any page and define the areas that either pass or fail usability requirements [...]
James, The link to the word document is nolonger valid. Could you e-mail me a copy of the check list in word? Thank you very much!
Hi Lee
It still works in Google docs – try that and should be fine