It’s more difficult to conduct usability studies with experienced users than with novices, and the improvements are usually smaller. Still, improving expert performance is often worth the effort.
The basics of testing experts are the same as any other user testing:
- Recruit representative users
- Give them realistic tasks
- Ask them to think out loud (while you shut up and avoid biasing their behavior with untimely hints)
Also, it’s usually best to first test with a handful of users and then iterate the design before the next round of testing. You should conduct these small studies as early as possible in the design process, using low-fidelity design prototypes. Paper prototyping might work even better with expert users than with novices, because the experts are used to performing the test tasks. They can thus focus even more on the problem at hand, as opposed to, say, whether a dialog box is presented on an index card or as a rectangle on the screen.
]Read More from source.
