Heuristic Evaluation
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User-Centered Design : Heuristic Evaluation
maintained by Lars Pind
(updated August 14, 2001)
What's the point
Before we bother people from the outside world to come in and test our
interface for us, we might as well make sure they're not going to
waste time on obvious problems that we could've found ourselves.
How to do it
It's really simple. You simply gather a small handful of reviewers,
give them the list
of heuristics to go by, and ask them to walk through the
interface, looking for violations of the heuristics.
Then you collect their responses, judge whether they are indeed
problems, weigh their severity, and enter them as bug tickets.
You don't necessarily have to use Jakob Nielsen's list of
heuristics. If you find some other list that you think is better, post
it for others on the
bboard and share it with the rest of us. I'll be happy to update
this document to include your list of heuristics.
What you'll find
The problems that you'll find are typical "usability"-type
problems. Missing information, lack of consistency, missing options
and exits, etc.
What you won't find is whether your idea about your user's goals
actually match the reality, or any other misunderstanding you may have
of what our users are like.
References
ui-team@arsdigita.com