Heuristic and Expert Reviews

A heuristic evaluation is an expert analysis of the usability of a website or product. Although the name sounds costly, it is an inexpensive technique.

Heuristic evaluations are an expert evaluation of a product, and therefore can only provide an approximation of the findings that you might expect from a usability study. However, UX professionals often use expert evaluations to complement usability studies or to determine what to test. 

Heuristics are mental shortcuts or assumptions that help us quickly make sense of the world.

We assume that someone dressed in a suit on a weekday morning is headed to work. We see a woman running behind a baby carriage, take note of her jogging clothes and decide that she is the baby’s mother – not a kidnapper.

Jakob Nielsen’s heuristics are the most well-known, but others exist.

How do Heuristic Evaluations work? 

The expert uses your website or software product and looks for violations of the guidelines. For instance, hundreds of ad-packed pages would fail the heuristic ‘Aesthetic and Minimalist Design’.

Do they work? Yes and no.

  • Even highly trained appraisers will differ in the number and types of usability problems they find.
  • Usability evaluators may have trouble uncovering problems that are specific to the product’s domain.
  • Some issues turn out to be red herrings – testing has shown that as many of 50% of problems identified don’t actually affect the product’s usability.

So why should you use it? A heuristic evaluation bypasses the effort needed to conduct usability tests and skips straight to the report phase. It is a great way to quickly and cheaply point out a number of serious usability issues. Use it early in the design process to uncover some blatant problems and start a usability plan, but be aware that testing may uncover additional, and possibly more severe, issues.

Nielsen’s Heuristics

The well-known Nielsen-Molich heuristics state that a system should:

  1. Keep users informed about its status appropriately and promptly.
  2. Show information in ways users understand from how the real world operates, and in the users’ language.
  3. Offer users control and let them undo erroreasily.
  4. Be consistent so users aren’t confused over what different words, icons, etc. mean.
  5. Prevent errors – a system should either avoid conditions where errors arise or warn users before they take risky actions (e.g., “Are you sure you want to do this?” messages).
  6. Have visible information, instructions, etc. to let users recognize options, actions, etc. instead of forcing them to rely on memory.
  7. Be flexible so experienced users can find faster ways to attain goals.
  8. Eliminate clutter, provide only relevant information for current tasks.
  9. Provide plain-language help regarding errors and solutions.
  10. List concise steps in lean, searchable documentation for overcoming problems.

Here is a great article explaining Heuristic Evaluations.

Ben Shneiderman of the University of Maryland shares his heuristics here.