The Pocket Universal Methods of Design

046 Heuristic Evaluation

An agreed-upon set of usability best practices used to evaluate an interface

• This is a usability inspection method that asks evaluators to assess an interface against a set of agreed-upon best practices or usability “rules of thumb.”

• Unlike usability tests with actual users, these evaluations enlist team members to inspect and fix baseline usability problems before user testing.

• When heuristics are applied repeatedly during an iterative design process, the principles will become more intuitive and usability problems easier to detect.

• Novices trained on heuristics and evaluators familiar with the subject and usability practices conduct evaluations.

• The method can help detect critical but missing dialogue elements ...