Heuristic Evaluation

ACS Developer Central : ACS Home : 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