Heuristic Evaluation

Why?

Complementary to user research, or when user research is too costly, a heuristic evaluation can be used to detect and repair usability errors.

How?

Usability experts are given detailed instructions or tasks, a set of usability guidelines, and a reporting format. The experts analyse a product for violations of the guidelines and suggest improvements to the product.

Ingrediënts

• A group of usability experts.
• Usability guidelines.
• A reporting format.
• A testable product or prototype.

In practice

Many product quality reviews are a lightweight form of heuristic evaluation. Working with explicit heuristics and standardized reporting forms however, can greatly improve this practice.

• A basic websource on heuristic evaluation is found on the webpage of the Norman Nielsen group: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-to-conduct-a-heuristic-evaluation/
• There is a chapter on Heuristic Evaluation in Usability Inspection Methods (Nielsen & Mack, 1994