If a website is in an early requirements gathering phase, to what extent can the usability of this site be advised at this stage?
I understand that achieving better usability comes from further evaluation and iterations post implementation but what more can be done at this initial stage for improving the first version?...
The steps I am taking currently are as follows:
Interviews with several end users asking them how they currently operate and their approach to conducting tasks offline or elsewhere online that this site is designed to integrate (sorry I cannot be more specific with details), and trying to find out why they currently do things this way, and identify any pain points
Review sites that are doing a similar sort of thing to see what is good/bad about them - e.g. I did a heuristic evaluation of a couple
I originally believed the focus of my work to be strictly usability, that should be channeled through the principles of UCD and interaction design too. More recently I have begun to understand the importance of UX and I'm wondering whether this is a better term for me to refer to in my work.
As I understand the two terms are interrelated in that usability is part of the UX. It would be very useful for someone to make the distinction between the type of recommendations to come out of a usability study and those from a UX study too.