UX experts use their expertise of users and UX theories to evaluate UX of a system.
UX experts use the system or walk through the concept description, and write down all positive and negative findings they think affect the user experience of the evaluated concept or product/service. Also, evaluators mark whether the finding is pragmatic or hedonic by its primary nature. A set of UX heuristics can be used to guide the evaluation.
Cheap
Fast
Does not require users to participate
It is challenging to estimate long-term UX in expert evaluation, especially if the experts are not real users of the system. Also, evaluation of early concepts without functionality may be unreliable. UX experts are also still a “scarce resource” (compared to usability experts).
Vaananen-Vainio-Mattila, K., Waljas, M. Developing an Expert Evaluation Method for User eXperience of Cross-Platform Web Services. Proceedings of Mindtrek’09, ACM 2009.
Vaananen-Vainio-Mattila, K., Waljas, M. Evaluating User Experience of Cross-Platform Web Services with a Heuristic Evaluation Method, accepted for Publication in Int. Journal of Art and Technology (IJART), 2010.
