3 Advantages of Expert Reviews

Too many companies don’t fully understand the relationship between their business goals and their users’ needs—which leads to digital products that impress neither the users nor the stakeholders.

Unfortunately, many products and services today weren’t built based on a strong understanding of their target user. That means the final products (or services) being built are sometimes very limited in their usefulness or usability.

And when companies find themselves with these kinds of out-of-touch products or services, it’s generally difficult to make improvements. Too often, leaders looking to take the proper next steps are hit with barriers like a constrained budget, limited timeframe or a general lack of curiosity. 

In turn, these leaders find it difficult to have the necessary research conducted in order to ‘light the way’ forward. 

So what can stakeholders do when they know there’s a disconnect between their product or service, and their customer—but they meet these seemingly immovable barriers?

Some research is better than no research

The one thing you should never do is sit still and do nothing. Some knowledge is always better than none—as long as it’s reliable and not based on assumptions. The more you know about the usability and effectiveness of your products and services, the better you can adjust and make products people actually want to use, even when your resources are limited.

So you can’t do nothing, but you don’t have the time or budget to bring in a full-fledged UX research team to evaluate your current state. That’s where the Expert Review comes in.

The accelerated research you may need: Expert Reviews

Expert Review is a comprehensive and accelerated method of research that provides actionable insights for existing products and services quickly and with a limited budget. These reviews are performed by UX experts with skills across the range of the UX spectrum, and they’re focused on uncovering major issues that impact the usability, accessibility and user experience of a system, service, site or app.

Expert Reviews are an evaluative research technique based on the UX experts’ existing knowledge and industry best practices. The trained UX expert uses their wealth of knowledge to uncover many of the issues that exist within a product without having to run expensive and time-consuming usability tests with users.

3 advantages of Expert Reviews

1. Expert reviews are fast and cost effective. Expert reviews can fit within nearly any budget, and can be conducted in hours or days instead of weeks or months.
   

2. Expert reviews focus on major issues, provide explanations as to why they are major issues, but most importantly, they provide a path forward for improvement.
   
   Each issue has an explanation as well as recommendations for how to improve or fix the issue. It isn’t enough to just tell you something isn’t working. Expert Reviews help you understand the problem with enough depth to make a difference immediately.
   

3. Expert reviews can be the fuel needed to gain internal buy-in for larger UX research and design efforts. Getting internal stakeholder approval can be complicated. Having a third-party explain issues and next steps can help move projects to the next step.

While Expert Reviews are not a substitute for qualitative research with users, they can be a compass that points to high-level, low-hanging issues that can be effectively dealt with and improved immediately and with minimum effort. They’re often used as the first pass at UX research and are then used to guide more comprehensive follow-up efforts such as user interviews and usability testing. At the very least, they can help you generate quick wins and build momentum towards larger transformation and success.

Ready to learn more about the power of expert reviews to rapidly improve your customer’s user experience?

Learn more about ChaiOne’s Expert Review offering.