Heuristics Evaluation : 101

As a designer we've all probably heard this term. But, honestly, do we really understand what conducting Heuristics is all about ?

Disclaimer: What you're about to read is my experience and the process that works for me. If something else works for you, good. The beauty of design is that you can get to the same result through whatever works for you.

---

The Definition

Heuristic evaluation is a process where experts use rules of thumb to measure the usability of user interfaces in independent walkthroughs and report issues

---

My History with Heuristics

I remember briefly coming across this term when I was doing my master's in design but honestly, i wasn't paying too much attention.

Fast forward a few months (maybe a couple years ?), i got my first job and my first assignment and lo and behold, it was to perform a Heuristic Evaluation of a website which was to be redesigned.

F***.

I was lost. But luckily for me, there was a person on board the project who was kind enough to tell me how to conduct, Heuristic Evaluation.

The General Process

Over the course of a few years and across multiple engagements, I, followed a certain process in order to evaluate various digital platform across multiple form factors.

• Step 1: Go to Google.

• Step 2: Find the "10 Heuristic Principles"

• Step 3: Read through them, get a little confused, but manage to make sense of most of it.

• Step 4: Go through the application to be evaluated and try to identify problems associated with the principles.

• Step 5: Take screen shots and pin point identified issues with the relevant criteria.

• Step 6: Explain said identified issues with some fluffed up language. (This is where confusion might set in and you doubt the work done.)

• Step 7: Brush aside doubt and labor through to finish the document.

• Step 8: Present it to a client. (Poor git probably doesn't know what you're talking about)

• Step 9: Wrap it up and pat yourself on the back for doing a good enough job

• Step 10: Rinse and repeat.

Now don't get me wrong. This works perfectly fine. But, the more I followed it, the lesser it made sense and the more questions I asked about what i was exactly doing. And this wasn't something only I did. My colleagues, friends, other firms and even people I interviewed followed a similar process.

Introspection

The thing about design is that, the more you question things, the better you understand it by trying to find the answers you need.

As I went over the same process again and again, I tried tweaking my process to make it easier for me to understand. This meant taking the existing, well known, 10 criteria and modifying them or the way i used them to gauge the usability of a digital platform. This invariability led to a few learnings.

1. Understanding what exactly Heuristic Evaluation means.

The Heuristic Evaluation framework gauges the usability and effectiveness of a given digital platform from the eyes of an end user. It places emphasis on evaluating the strength of a digital platform based on the information present, the design system being used and the capability to handle errors.

2. The "10 Heuristics Principles" weren't meant to be used directly as criteria for evaluation.

The 10 Heuristic Principles were technically drafted by the NN/group to be a set of guidelines of key elements or features that a website is supposed to have as it was being created.

So, how to evaluate a platform ?

Rather than evaluating a platform against the 10 Heuristic Principles it is more effective to use the principles as a guideline and evaluate a platform based on,

How effective is the information being provided to the user ?

This helps evaluate the relevance, usefulness and the understandability of the information being presented to the user. For example, an outcome might be that the information being presented causes cognitive overload.

How effective is the design system ?

This helps gauge the efficiency, usability and the consistency of the design system being used in the platform. We also see if the system provides valuable feedback to the user. For example, an outcome might be that a non-cohesive design system might lead to a difficulty in creating effective mental models.

How effective is the platform at handling errors ?

This helps to gauge the effectiveness of the digital platform to prevent errors and help a user recover from errors. For example, an outcome might be that actionable items are placed too close to each other, hence causing errors through mis-clicks.

Presenting your evaluation

Now that the platform has been evaluated, the next step would be to present it. More often than not, we as designers tend to present, heuristics evaluations to clients and non-design personnel in order to try and communicate potential areas of improvement.

Using too many complicated jargons might be a deterrent for some. Hence it is most effective to use simple language, as much as possible (This is exactly when the Heuristics Principles don't do a very good job) to explain the problem at hand.

It is also very helpful to illustrate these problems by using screen grabs for reference.

Below is an example of how some problems were presented after conducting a thorough evaluation of a digital platform.

Each issue was accompanied by multiple screen grabs but they had to be removed for confidentiality reasons.

Heuristics Simplified

Conclusion

To re iterate,

• The heuristics principles are to be used as a reference for evaluating a platform. It is not effective at communicating the actual problem at hand.

• Simple language is more effective at describing complex problems.

• Screen grabs help pin point the problem better.