QUIS: applying a new walkthrough method to a product design process

摘要

Practical usability evaluation techniques for product development should be available early in the development process as well as time- and cost-effective. Inspection methods such as cognitive walkthroughs and heuristic evaluation have been developed to satisfy these requirements. However, both methods are less practical in that heuristic evaluation needs usability specialists (Nielsen 1992) and cognitive walkthroughs are difficult for novice evaluators (Wharton et al. 1992). Being usable for novice evaluators is another requirement for practical methods to be widely employed for product development. Therefore, we developed and introduced QUIS (Quick Usability Inspection System) into our company, a new inspection method designed for product engineers without usability expertise, based on the cognitive walkthrough (Suzuki et al. 1995). Despite its effectiveness verified by experiments, however, QUIS has been employed in only a few products. In this paper we first outline QUIS and our activities of promoting QUIS and then discuss issues we should consider in introducing evaluation tools into a product design process.