What is Usability Inspection?

Usability inspection is a set of usability evaluation methods where a usability evaluator inspects a user interface.

Usability inspection is in contrast to usability testing where the usability of the interface is evaluated by testing it in usability lab on real users and/or mock users. Usability inspections can generally be used early in the development process by evaluating prototypes user interface; this cannot be done using usability testing.

Usability inspection methods are generally considered to be cheaper to implement than testing on users.