Will,
I realize you are being asked for an expert heuristic review, but
thought you might be interested in an approach we took on our team.
We did in-house usability tests comparing our site to our top 7
competitors. From these results, we were able to put together a SWOT
(strength, weakness, opportunity, threat) analysis showing how we
compared to our competitors.
Again, I realize you are being asked for a heuristic review, but this
analysis provided us such insightful information we were able to
tackle major industry-wide issues and also help prioritize our plan
of work. (It also helped convince higher ups that we had the video
and it wasn't just our team saying "X is bad. We need to address this
right away.") As a last aside, we found the SWOT format worked well
for them because it was a style/language with which they were
familiar and comfortable.
It won't replace your heuristic review, but just something to keep in
the back of your mind.
Thanks,
Erin
erin walsh | product developer | For Rent Media Solutions™
150 granby street, 16th floor | norfolk, va 23510
p:757.351.8444 | f:757.961.4827
[email protected]| www.FRMediaSolutions.com
You Have Multiple Marketing Needs... We Have Multiple Solutions!
On Aug 17, 2009, at 7:24 AM, Willl Hacker wrote:
I've been tasked with documenting how one of my company's user
interfaces compares with our top three competitors, as a way of
understanding where we excel, where we need improvement, and where we
are roughly equal. The business goal is to more fully understand the
UI conventions used by these sites so we better anticipate what
customers coming to us from the competition bring in the way of
expectations. We'd like to know what our competition does well to
make sure we aren't lacking in that area, and where there is an
opportunity to improve on what they are doing to provide a possibly
better experience.
I'm wondering if anyone has seen a good report format for recording
the observations of the four sites. I was thinking of using
Nielsen's heuristics checklist as a starting point, but would like
to know if anyone has done this kind of analysis and how they
performed it. Another approach I'm considering is one I found on the
IBM website: http://tinyurl.com/davyr5
I recognize this type of analysis involves a certain amount of
subjectivity and does not address things like the users' domain
knowledge and the context in which the customers use the sites so it
will be impossible to make absolute statements about what works and
what doesn't. I'm curious how you would approach this task.
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