Guidelines-based review

Draft

<pageby nominor="false" comments="false"/>

Introduction

In a guidelines-based review designers or other persons are asked to check a system against a longer list of items. Guidelines can include hundreds of items ....

Guideline based reviews are done in several contexts:

• In usability testing such reviews can be either "low cost and better than nothing" review or be used as a complementary usability method.
• A related purpose is to test whether an application is consistent with platform-specific conventions, e.g. Mac OS X, Windows 7, Android, etc.

See also: heuristic evaluation

List of well-known guidelines and manuals

Usability of web sites

Userfocus usability evaluation workbook

Authors: David Travis (userfocus.co.uk), July 6, 2009

Available both as web content and as free Excel workbook. Translations exist for several languages.

The web site and workbook are organized in 9 sections that include each between 13 and 37 guidelines. An evaluator then can rate a site +1/0/-1 for each guideline and add a comment. The worksheet will then compute percentages with respect to all filled-in ratings (some guidelines may not be relevant for your own web site). The 9 sections cover the following issues:

1. Home page usability: 20 guidelines to evaluate the usability of home pages.
2. Task orientation: 44 guidelines to evaluate how well a web site supports the users tasks.
3. Navigation and IA: 29 guidelines to evaluate navigation and information architecture.
4. Forms and data entry: 23 guidelines to evaluate forms and data entry.
5. Trust and credibility: 13 guidelines to evaluate trust and credibility.
6. Writing and content quality: 23 guidelines to evaluate writing and content quality.
7. Page layout and visual design: 38 guidelines to evaluate page layout and visual design.
8. Search usability: 20 guidelines to evaluate search.
9. Help, feedback and error tolerance: 37 guidelin

The workbook is locked to prevent mistakes, but you can unlock it and add/remove criteria.

Usability.gov guidelines

Author: U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

These fairly detailed guidelines are organized by chapters and each guideline is rankend in importance and also scientific evidence.

General web design guidelines

The The Web Style Guide 3rd edition

Author: Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton

The first version of the Web Style Guide was a web site called the Yale Web Style Guide and posted in 1993. A 2nd update was published in 1997 and in 1999 a first print edition was produced. The current, 3rd edition, is available both online (free and unabridged) and in book form.

This book isn't a guideline in the classical sense, rather an introductory text about web site design. However, several chapters include explicit guidelines, e.g. Universal Usability Guidelines.

Generic user interface guidelines

• Guidelines for designing user interface software, ESD-TR-86-278, August 1986, by Sidney L. Smith and Jane N. Mosier. This is the oldest (very detailed) guide

Bibliography

• Lynch, Patrick, J and Sarah Horton (2009). Web Style Guide, 3rd edition: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites, Yale University Press, ISBN 9780300137378.