Abstract
How do group discussions affect the output of a usability inspection, as compared to individual evaluators only? This question was investigated in association with usability inspections of a music community website. Potential users of the website participated as evaluators in two usability inspection sessions. All evaluators made individual predictions prior to group discussions. Twenty-five percent of the usability issues generated in the group discussion were new, viz. not predicted by individual evaluators. Also, the group discussion served to discard or modify the majority of usability issues predicted by the individual evaluators. The discarded individual predictions were typically low severity.
