The cognitive walkthrough is a usability evaluation method in which one or more evaluators work through a series of tasks and ask a set of questions from the perspective of the user.Its focus is on understanding the system's learnability for new or infrequent users. The objective of cognitive walktrhough is to identify usability problems in order to evaluate ease of learning to use a system by exploring it. This method seeks to probe the following:
- relationship between how designers and users conceptualise a task;
- proper choice of vocabulary for on-screen terms;
- adequate feedback for an action;
In order to carry out this evaluation, it's required to set up a preparation stage to define:
-hypothise about user and the supposed knowledge they have about a task and its underlying interface;
- tasks scenario, thought through from a collection of important and recurrent tasks;
- correct sequence of actions to complete a given task;
- design blueprint illustrating each step and the ensuing interface changes.
The procedure to run this evaluation involves the following steps:
- projectist shows design proposal;
- evaluators think up situations about an interface/user interface based on the prior tasks scenario;
- evaluators simulate the execution of the task, asking questions as they go along;
- evaluators make note of key points that users need to know before getting started on the task and learn upon doing it.
The point of using a cognitive walkthrough as method for evaluating human-computer interaction is to make sure that users are capable of navigating a system interface by trial and error with no required training.
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