Usability Heuristic Evaluation

Heuristic Evaluation
Usability

Luís Filipe

Luís Filipe

Managing Partner YouX

The Importance of Usability Evaluation

When developing new interfaces or products, usability is a critical success factor and should not be left to the discretion of the development team. Their experience with the interface or product tends to be very different from that of their future potential users. What the former is understood to be simple and intuitive tends to be complex for users who usually do not have the same level of involvement and knowledge of the area in question. The result of ignoring the latter tends to be failure.

It is for this reason that companies and organizations are increasingly aware of the need to assess the usability of the solutions they intend to develop in order to ensure that they will be used effectively and with pleasure by their potential users.

However, usability evaluation tends to be neither simple nor fast and, moreover, tends to be expensive. It is in this context that the heuristic evaluation of usability has been affirmed as an excellent option. It does not replace the use of UX domain methods, techniques and tools . However, the speed of its implementation, organization that allows and the results it provides, is a good way to evaluate the usability of a product or interface design. Additionally, it combines well with other tools such as Personas or User Journey.

What is the Usability Heuristic Evaluation?

The heuristic evaluation uses UX specialists with knowledge in the field to which the interface or product whose usability is intended to be evaluated belongs. These specialists select a set of heuristics from which they will elaborate a checklist of criteria that will allow them to find flaws and inconsistencies that escape the design and development teams. Due to its characteristics, heuristic evaluation translates into a practical way of solving problems and helping decision-making.

Each member of the expert team will independently execute the tasks, record the usability issues and which heuristic violations occur, and then rank each issue in terms of severity. 

For severity classification a severity table is used.

Rating Severity
0 Not a usability issue
1 "Cosmetic" problem
2 minor problem
3 Major problem. It is necessary to resolve.
4 Disaster, it is imperative to solve the problem.
WordPress DataTable

The Norman-Molish Heuristics

There are several heuristics, but we won't be far from the truth if we say that the Norman-Molisch are the best known.

In short, we can say that the Nielson-Molisch heuristics postulate:

1) Keep users informed about their status in a timely and appropriate way.

2) Display information in a way that users understand using the example of how the real world works and the language of the users.

3) Give users control and let them undo mistakes easily.

4) Be consistent so that users don't get confused about what different words or icons mean, for example.

5) Prevent errors – a system should avoid conditions where errors arise or warn users before they take risky actions (eg “Are you sure you want to do this?” messages).

6) Have information and instructions available that allow users to recognize options, actions, etc., rather than forcing them to rely on their memory.

7) Have the flexibility to allow experienced users to find faster ways to reach their goals.

8) Avoid confusion by limiting the information available only to what is relevant to the specific tasks the user is performing.

9) Provide help using simple language about errors and their solutions.

10) List the steps in a simple, searchable documentation that helps to overcome problems.

The Pros and Cons of Heuristic Usability Evaluation

Heuristic evaluation is a method that has great potential for evaluating usability. However, like other methods, it also has its pros and cons.

PROS CONS
Assessors can focus directly on a specific issue. Reviewers can point out issues that are not currently usability issues.
The evaluation can detect issues that would affect the entire UX early on. It is necessary to choose exactly the right heuristic or the right set of them to make safe evaluations and find and identify usability problems
Compared to running tests, we can get feedback faster and with less cost. It can be difficult to find evaluators who are both industry experts and usability experts.
Can be combined with usability tests If multiple evaluators are needed it may be easier to go for usability tests
With the right heuristics, evaluators can help drill down to problems and point to the best solutions The subjective opinions of evaluators may be biased and solutions may be delayed.
WordPress DataTable

How a heuristic evaluation is conducted

Heuristic evaluations provide indications of where problems are, suggesting some options that will allow for corrections.

Key Points:

  1. Knowing what we will test and how - be it a complete product or just a procedure, we have to clearly define the parameters that we want to test and goal.
  2. Know the users and have a clear idea of ​​the target's objectives, contexts, etc – the user's personas and journeys can help in this process.
  3. Select 3 to 5 evaluators – ensuring their expertise both in the industry and in usability.
  4. Define the heuristics (usually no more than 10) – it will depend on the nature of the system/product/design to be analysed. The use of adaptation of the Nielson-Molish ones adding others that prove to be relevant is a good principle.
  5. Define the checklist for each heuristic.
  6. Skip briefing to the evaluators on what should be covered in a selection of tasks and suggest a range of severity that helps signal and prioritize the problems.
  7. Step One – Allow evaluators to use the software freely so that they can identify the issues to be analyzed.
  8. Second step – the evaluators examine the individual elements according to the heuristics, also checking how they interact in the overall design and recording the problems encountered.
  9. Interrogate the evaluators in a session so that they can group the results obtained for analysis and suggest corrections.

What will you find in the evaluation report

The purpose of the heuristic usability evaluation report is to identify the main problems found in the product or interface and to serve as the basis for a discussion on how to overcome them.

By its nature, this report will tend to call into question aspects of the design and development team's work that the project stakeholders have promoted and championed. For this reason it is important that there is a face-to-face presentation of the report.

Aspects taken into account::

  • as with any project, do not go beyond the scope (of the report).
  • reinforce the authority by presenting the CV's of the authors (experts).
  • include the heuristics and checklists used and demonstrate their support.
  • include a simple summary of the main issues identified as well as an indication of the time and resources needed to resolve them.
  • list and describe the identified problems sorted according to their severity (severity scale)
  • for each of the identified problems, present recommendations that allow for their resolution.
  • put together program screens of problems to help identify and understand them.

Are you developing new interfaces or products or looking to improve existing solutions? See our services.

You cannot copy content from this page