HEURISTIC EVALUATION
This article is to fulfill the MSIB — UX Writing Camp learning assignment
Heuristic Evaluation is a process where experts use rules of thumb to measure the usability of user interfaces in independent walkthroughs and report issues. The purpose of doing a heruistic evaluation is to improve the usability of the product from the start of development. I would like to point out, yes, heuristic evaluation is a practical method and for reaching an immediate goal.
So What is Usability?
The usability refers to the ease of access or use of a website or product. Usability is the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specified context of use.
Jakob Nielsen summarizes 10 Usability Heuristics related to methods for analyzing an object so that it makes it easy for users to achieve goals, which are as follows:
01. Visibility of system status
When you do some action or referring to a continuing process, the status should be clearly mentioned until it’s completion.
Just a visual sign like the change of the button’s colour, a loading spinner , an icon animation or information about what you ordered can help the user to understand what’s going on and prevent them from other unnecessary interactions.
02. Match between system and the real world
The system should speak the users’ language, with words, phrases, and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms.
03. User control and freedom
Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a marked “emergency exit” to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo.
04. Consistency and standards
There are 2 different kinds of consistency in products: internal and external. Internal consistency refers to your own product, website or app, such as maintaining the same color for call to action buttons across the website. External consistency refers to general conventions across all products, not only your own.
Language consistency is not right, The sentence “Nothing selected” is changed to “Pilih” to match the province column.
05. Error prevention
Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.
06. Recognition rather than recall
Minimize the user’s memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another.
A good digital example of this can be found in Google docs. When you want to edit text but you aren’t sure of the exact style name.
07. Flexibility and efficiency of use
The design should be easier to use for all the user groups. Even though we have only one set of a user group, then there would be novice users and experienced ones.
in the Satu Sehat application, the telephone numbers listed in each hospital are less able to be notified by the user and the telephone number should be clicked directly to be contacted without having to retype it (direct direct).
08. Aesthetic and minimalist design
When we think about the signal-to-noise-ratio of a website, where “signal” includes the relevant information and “noise” includes anything else that may be purely decorative, it’s best to aim for a high ratio favoring “signal”. This can include any text and graphics that efficiently communicate your goals for the business and for the user. Since a user needs to process all the information and visuals on a given page, it’s important not to overload them with unnecessary content.
09. Help users recognise, diagnose, and recover from errors
We should naturally always aim to prevent errors from occurring in our products, but if they do occur, we need to present them clearly and direct the user to a seamless solution. These error messages can be a combination of easily understood text, color and icon notifications.
For example, if you try to click “Login” on Pinterest.com without entering an email or password, you will see the following error:
Here we’re given a clear message about what went wrong and how to fix it, and the input has been highlighted in red (a common color denoting “stop” or “error”).
10. Help and documentation
The last heuristic is about providing help and documentation. Best case scenario is that users won’t ever need the help, but when they do need it, they should be able to find it easily, and they should be able to find the piece of information they are looking for — so findability is the most important aspect here.