The relevance of Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design
Usability heuristics are rules of thumb for interaction design. They were developed by Jakob Nielsen together with Rolf Molich in the early 90s. They include the following 10 principles.
1. Visibility of System status: The system should always keep users informed about what is going on through appropriate feedback within reasonable time. E.g Progress indicator
2. 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. E.g ‘The username doesn’t exist in our database’ instead of ‘Error X1212’
3. 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. E.g when you mistakenly delete a file, a window dialogue pops up to confirm such action
4. Consistency and Standard: Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. This comes in page elements, layout and choice of language.
5. 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. Letting users know they’ve made a mistake through clear and helpful notifications makes for a good user experience, however, preventing such errors from occurring is even better.
6. 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. E.g virtually all Microsoft office tools have the same format for the Menu bar further facilitating a good user experience
7. 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. Keyboard shortcuts, personalized user interfaces, and advanced options are all examples of ways expert users are able to speed up their interactions with applications.
8. 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. This is important for UI design to ensure a distraction-free design with a focus on what is deemed important.
9. 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. This could be in form of feedback, allowing users to undo mistakes, communicate error messages in easy-to-understand language and preventing errors.
10. 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. E.g onboarding page for a new user of an application, tips on how to use a tool on a website etc
Conclusion
Utilizing usability heuristics helps you evaluate UI design and guide you in the delivery of better user experiences through your designs. These guidelines are extremely helpful for UX teams to create products that are easy to use and can increase user stickiness and retention for a product or service.
