Hypothesis testInspection Method
Cognitive Walkthrough
Cognitive Walkthrough is an inspection method for evaluating interface designs by simulating and analyzing how users will learn to use a system through exploration and trial. Developed by Clayton Lewis, Peter Polson, Cathleen Wharton, and John Rieman in 1990, this method is grounded in cognitive psychology and focuses specifically on learnability—whether first-time or occasional users can discover how to perform tasks without formal training. Evaluators role-play user actions, answer a set of critical questions about feedback and discovery at each step, and document usability problems.
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Sources
- Lewis, C., Polson, P. G., Wharton, C., & Rieman, J. (1990). Testing a walkthrough methodology for specifying and evaluating user interface designs. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 387–392). DOI: 10.1145/97243.97304 ↗
- Wharton, C., Rieman, J., Lewis, C., & Polson, P. (1994). The cognitive walkthrough method: A practitioner's guide. In J. Nielsen & R. L. Mack (Eds.), Usability Inspection Methods (pp. 105–140). John Wiley & Sons. ISBN: 0-471-01877-5