Cognitive Walk-through Process
A cognitive walk-through is an inexpensive method of evaluating the usability of your application by having members of the team evaluate a simple prototype of the user interface (UI).
Use any prototyping tool you like to create a mock-up of the UI for the cognitive walk-through. Microsoft Office PowerPoint, Macromedia Flash, Macromedia Director, and HTML work well and are easy to author with. Create a list of tasks in advance so that you know which areas of the UI to evaluate during the cognitive walk-through session.
During the walk-through session, assign one person as the moderator and assign another person to take notes. Have at least one team member adopt the role of a user. For best results, use five or more people in this role. The "users" should try to stay in character as much as possible, performing tasks within the application the way a real user would, and avoiding taking any shortcuts based on inside knowledge.
For each step in the task, users should ask themselves, "Do I know what to do at this step?" and "If I know what to do at this step and choose the correct path, do I feel that I am making progress toward my end goal?" Ask all users to independently record their answers to these questions on paper and then move on to the next task.
At the end of the session, each user will have a list of the usability issues that they encountered. These findings should be discussed with members of the team at a separate meeting, and work items should be created to address the usability issues.
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