When designing a product it is very easy to get stuck in coming up with ideas, thinking about new things to add to the product or just improving the design as you see fit. It is easy to forget that designing should be an iterative process where we should evaluate the product every so often. An obvious reason to why evaluation is needed is because there might be bugs or other problems with the product that are hindering the usability of the product. Finding such problems early in the development cycle is important as the cost and time to fix them increase over time. Another reason to evaluate is to deal with problems that impact the users experience in a negative way. While designing you as a designer might think that your system is intuitive and easy to understand, but a new user might experience it as nonintuitive and difficult to use. I think many of us have experienced this with webpages where it feels like it's impossible to find what you are looking for, only to find out that you have been searching in the wrong place.
On a lecture, Jan Gulliksen mentioned two types of evaluation: Empirical and Analytical evaluation. These could both be used during a formative evaluation during the design process to test prototypes. I feel that analytical evaluation is a lower budget evaluation if you can't afford setting up a test lab, if the test can't be performed with test subjects (for example: too dangerous) or if you are standing between solutions that are similar, costly to develop, and can be predicted. The empirical evaluation, I feel, will yield more interesting, qualitative data. It might be costly to use, as you need test subjects, a test environment and a way to record the data, but the information you get will be from the users, the people that will be the ones to use the product. Personally I feel that involving the users is the preferred method.
An example of an analytical method is the KLM method where you break down a task into individual keystrokes. An important thing to have in mind is that there can be different ways to perform the task depending on if the user is experienced and knows shortcuts or if the user is inexperienced and takes the long route. When the "route" is known you can calculate the time it takes to press the keys and even move the mouse using a formula. An empirical method is the Thinking-out-loud, where the actions on the user and the voice of the user will be recorded. While testing the product the user will think out loud, hence the name, talking about how and why it does certain things. This test is very dependant on the user, as doing two things at the same time can be difficult, especially if you get stuck. Getting some biased results will also be the case, as you'll want an observer in the same room in case the user gets stuck.
My question is: What evaluation method should we use on our design this early in the process, and why?
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