How do you balance the trade-offs between speed, cost, and quality in a heuristic evaluation?

2 Choose the right heuristics

Heuristics are the general guidelines or rules of thumb that evaluators use to judge the usability of an interface. There are many sets of heuristics available, such as Nielsen's 10 heuristics, Shneiderman's 8 golden rules, or ISO 9241-110 principles. However, not all heuristics are equally applicable or useful for every interface or domain. You need to choose the right heuristics that match your scope and goals, and that cover the main aspects of usability, such as visibility, feedback, consistency, error prevention, and user control. You can also customize or adapt the heuristics to fit your specific context and needs.

3 Select and train the evaluators

The number and quality of the evaluators can affect the speed, cost, and quality of a heuristic evaluation. Ideally, you want to have at least three to five evaluators, who have some experience and expertise in usability engineering, user interface design, and the domain of the interface. However, finding and hiring such evaluators can be expensive and time-consuming. Alternatively, you can use internal or external stakeholders, such as developers, testers, or potential users, as evaluators, but you need to train them on how to apply the heuristics and report the problems. You can also use a combination of expert and novice evaluators, to get different perspectives and insights.

4 Conduct and document the evaluation

The evaluation process consists of having each evaluator inspect the interface individually and independently, and report the problems they find. You can use different methods to conduct the evaluation, such as walkthroughs, scenarios, or tasks. You can also use different tools to document the evaluation, such as spreadsheets, forms, or software. The main goal is to capture the severity, frequency, location, and description of each problem, as well as the heuristic that was violated. You should also encourage the evaluators to suggest possible solutions or improvements for the problems.

5 Analyze and prioritize the results

The final step is to analyze and prioritize the results of the evaluation. You need to consolidate and compare the reports from different evaluators, and identify the common and unique problems. You also need to assign a priority level to each problem, based on its severity, frequency, and impact on the users and the business goals. You can use different methods to prioritize the problems, such as ratings, rankings, or matrices. The main goal is to create a list of actionable recommendations for improving the interface, and to communicate them to the design team and the stakeholders.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?