Hire a Usability Specialist

• What to ask
• Where to look for consultants

When hiring a usability specialist (whether in-house, as a consultant, or by selecting among contractors who have bid on your Statement of Work), it is important to review the individual specialist's skills and background to ensure that you select a qualified expert.

What to ask

Begin by reviewing the usability specialist's experience, including:

• past performance
• current list of clients
• variety of project work
• education
• references

Here are some topics and questions to ask prospective consultants:

Client work

• Who are your current clients?
• How long have you worked for these clients?
• Can we contact your current clients for references?
• What types of projects have you worked on?
• What was your role in each project?
• What was the outcome or result of the project?

Range of usability skills

• What types of services do you offer?
• Do you conduct user research?
• What do you consider user research?
• What types of user research do you do?
• Do you do user and task analysis?
• Do you assist organizations in setting measurable usability goals?
• Do you provide writing for the Web services?
• Do you have skills in information architecture?
• Can you create wireframes of the Web site for our design team?
• Can you provide usability training for our internal team?

Usability testing methodology

• At what point in the process do you suggest we conduct usability testing?
• How many rounds of usability testing do you recommend?
• How many users do you test with?
• How do you recruit users for a usability test?
• Where do you recommend we conduct our usability tests?
• What type of equipment do you use to conduct a usability test?
• Do you recommend remote usability testing?
• Do you have the equipment to conduct remote tests?
• What types of metrics do you capture during a usability test?
• How do you use these metrics?
• How do you report the results of the usability test?
• Do you provide research-based recommendations?
• Do you provide video clips with your usability report?
• Do you provide on-going consultation to assist design teams in implementing the results?

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Where to look for consultants

• If you are in a government agency, look at the GSA schedule.
  GSA Schedules e-Library, Information Technology Services
  (General Services Administration)
  This is GSA's list of numerous information technology, including usability testing, vendors. To find usability and human factors vendors and specialists, you can browse the list or conduct a search.
• Ask others who have hired usability consultants.
• Look at lists from professional societies.

You can find lists of usability consultants at the Web sites of at least three professional societies. (Note that our linking to these lists does not imply an endorsement of any specific consultant or list.)

• HCI Consultants
  (Special Interest Group for Computer Human Interaction)
  The HCI consultants list is a free service to the HCI community. The listing is free for any consultant who appears to be doing work related to HCI.
• Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES)
  The directory contains listings created by HFES Full Members in good standing who have paid a fee to promote their services.
• Usability Professionals' Association (UPA)
  The Consultant Directory is published as a service to those seeking a usability professional for their project. A listing in this directory is on a fee-paid basis.

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Next steps

When you have a usability specialist on board, if you have assembled your project team, you are ready to hold a kick-off meeting.

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