Cognitive Walkthroughs and User Experience Design
Cognitive Walk-through is the technical name for “design a prototype - test it yourself ” method of usability testing. It is usually executed in the initial stages of software development. In User experience / Interface design, it means, instead of a real user testing the prototype, the UX/I designer himself tests the prototype as the user. This is very essential in the initial stages of UI design where you don’t have access to users, or users dont exist.
In general only a small percentage of real people send feedback about your software. The rest simply uninstall the software and move away. That way, you lose vital feedbacks about the issues they faced. So do cognitive walk-throughs during initial design. This will help you to get rid of the “common-sense” issues.
I made a couple of cognitive walk throughs in the current product design.. and well, I am designing the experience again from scratch. Why? Because the cognitive walkthough of my first design did not produce satisfactory results in me. But I am happy that the issues let me know the problems in the first design. And the second iteration is coming up with attention being paid to the pain points observed in the first iteration. 