{"id":38,"date":"2010-08-31T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-31T01:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/measuringu.com\/he\/"},"modified":"2021-01-28T06:29:27","modified_gmt":"2021-01-28T06:29:27","slug":"he","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/measuringu.com\/he\/","title":{"rendered":"6 Things You Didn’t Know About Heuristic Evaluations"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>A Heuristic evaluation is a process where someone trained in usability principles reviews an application (a website or software). She compares the website against a set of guidelines or principles (“Heuristics”) that tend to make for more usable applications.<\/p>\n

For example, if while completing a task a user gets a message that says “Error 1000xz Contact System Administrator” this would violate a Heuristic: “Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes).”<\/p>\n

Maybe you already have heard-of and use Heuristics Evaluations. Here are six things you might NOT know about this popular usability method:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. An effective Heuristic Evaluation needs to have multiple evaluators<\/span> (3 to 5) not just one because different evaluators tend to find different problems.<\/li>\n
  2. Heuristics Evaluations should be done prior to and in addition to user-testing<\/span>, not instead of user-testing. If you have easy access to a few experts then you can identify a lot of low-hanging problems prior to subjecting them to users. What’s more, you can then check your expert effectiveness by seeing how many HE problems are encountered by users during the user-test.<\/li>\n
  3. Rolf Molich<\/a>, one of the co-creators of the method said “Heuristic Evaluations are 99% bad<\/span>” at UPA 2009<\/a> on a panel with Jakob Nielsen and Chauncey Wilson on Heuristic Evaluations. His reaction was in large part because HE is being used instead of user-testing and only loosely based on any heuristics.<\/li>\n
  4. Double experts are better than single experts<\/span>: Being an expert in both usability principles and the domain[pdf]<\/span><\/a> make for better, more focused heuristic evaluations. So if you’re testing a financial application you’d have better results by having a usability expert either with an accounting background or well versed in the lexicon and flow of accounting and finance software.<\/li>\n
  5. There is not a single set of Heuristics<\/span>. Nielsen’s 10 famous heuristics<\/a> are the ones most used but there are also others:\n
      \n
    1. Bastien and Scapin created a set of 18 Ergonomic criteria [paid link]<\/span>
      \n<\/a><\/li>\n
    2. Gerhardt-Powals 10 Cognitive Engineering Principles<\/a><\/li>\n
    3. Connell & Hammond’s 30 Usability Principles [inverted pdf]<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n
    4. Smith & Mosier’s 944 guidelines<\/a> for the design of user-interfaces (from 1986)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
    5. There is controversy over just how effective Heuristic Evaluations are<\/span> in finding problems as compared to user-testing. There is even controversy over how you determine the effectiveness of a usability method. This was one of the key criticisms in Gray and Salzman’s 1998 influential paper<\/a> Damaged Merchandise: A simple count of problems isn’t a reliable or valid measure of effectiveness.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

       <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      A Heuristic evaluation is a process where someone trained in usability principles reviews an application (a website or software). She compares the website against a set of guidelines or principles (“Heuristics”) that tend to make for more usable applications. For example, if while completing a task a user gets a message that says “Error 1000xz […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10938,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_price":"field_56e41332a1ae5","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"Tribe__Tickets_Plus__Commerce__WooCommerce__Main","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[42],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/measuringu.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/measuringu.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/measuringu.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/measuringu.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/measuringu.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/measuringu.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/measuringu.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/measuringu.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/measuringu.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/measuringu.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}