Design better UX using Heuristics Review
During heuristics review, a usability professional uses his/her knowledge of usability standards, coupled with their experience designing and testing websites and applications to review a product while stepping into the shoes of a typical user. Exploring the design, layout, functionality, navigation, content and supporting documentation (if available), the reviewer will discover areas where a site or application diverges from established standards or hampers the user experience.
The framework discussed in this article is based on the Heuristics established by Jakob Nielsen. It is a usability engineering method for finding the usability problems in a user interface design so that they can be addressed as a part of an iterative design process. Heuristic evaluation is performed by having one or more evaluators inspect the interface during experimentation. Evaluators use their expert knowledge and experience to rate a product using a list of ten guidelines established by Nielsen. A link to a template is provided at the end of this article for the reader to use to conduct a Heuristics Review.
10 Guidelines for Heuristics Review
- Visibility of system status. The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.
- 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. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.
- User control and freedom. Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked “emergency exit” to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo.
- Consistency and standards. Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing.
- Error prevention. Even better than good error messages are 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.
- 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. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.
- Flexibility and efficiency of use. Accelerators — unseen by the novice user — may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.
- Aesthetic and minimalist design. Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.
- Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors. Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.
- Help and documentation. Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user’s task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.
Heuristic Ratings
Although heuristic ratings are purely subjective based on review of the design — layout, functionality, navigation, content and supporting documentation of the site — they provide a benchmark for the designer or design team to communicate the scale and scope of the design exercise to stakeholders. It is good practice to provide a report on recommendations and impact when presenting heuristics findings to stakeholders.
Products are rated on a scale of 1 to 5 against each design guideline. 1 being representing the lowest rating and 5 the best possible.
Number of evaluators
It can be challenging for a single individual to find all the usability problems in a product. Therefore, it is possible to improve the effectiveness of the method significantly by involving multiple evaluators. Some usability problems are so easy to find that they are found by almost everybody, but there are also some problems that are found by very few evaluators. Therefore, it is good practice to involve multiple evaluators in any heuristic evaluation. Based on industry findings, typically three to five evaluators is a reliable number of evaluators to engage, any more doesn’t typically result in more findings.
Advantages of Heuristics Evaluation
Like any design and research method, there are advantages and disadvantages to the usability inspection method of heuristic evaluation. Some of the advantages offered include:
- Heuristic evaluation can be conducted quickly and not carry the ethical and practical challenges associated with research methods involving actual users.
- Heuristics can help the evaluators focus their attention on specific areas of the product.
- Evaluating product using a set of heuristics can help identify usability problems with individual elements and how they impact the overall user experience, which can later inform more focused user research.
Heuristics Review Template
To add to our design toolkit at Design Centered Co. we have developed a template to enable designers and our clients to quickly and easily conduct heuristic reviews. We are pleased to share this template with the reader here. We only ask that when using or presenting our template, please include us in the credits or references. This will encourage us to build and make available more of such products for use by the global design community.
View Template (Google Docs)
