Cognitive Walkthrough
What is it? A combination of observation and a user talking aloud to evaluate the experience and perceptions of a product/service/website/retail environment, etc., from the user’s perspective. It may entail completing specific predetermined/structured tasks, or be unstructured, free and open.
When is it best used? When wanting to understand a user’s or potential user’s personal experience, in real-time. It is used in retail research (aka shop-alongs), anthropology (ethnographic research on using a new mealkit at home), and broader UX research It is a term particularly employed by the Usability Research community in the context of interaction design. In this instance, it refers to new users and task based usability testing specifically.
What does it entail? Inviting a user to experience whatever is being researched (retail environment, website, product, service, etc) while talking out loud about exactly what they are experiencing.
In interaction design it involves defining specific tasks that a new user would need to perform when using a product and breaking each down into all the steps required to complete them. The evaluator goes through each step and asks the following four questions:
Will the user try and achieve the right outcome?
Will the user notice that the correct action is available to them?
Will the user associate the correct action with the outcome they expect to achieve?
If the correct action is performed; will the user see that progress is being made towards their intended outcome?
After this, feedback is synthesized and changes are made to address any issues discovered. source
Interchangeable term: “Thinking Out Loud”, Contextual Interview, Contextual Inquiry, Shop-along
Related Terms: usability, user, source
Use in a sentence: A cognitive walkthrough is a great way to test the intuitive usability of a new piece of medical equipment or a new ATM deposit screen flow.
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