Heuristic Evaluation

A Heuristic Evaluation is an inspection of a system, application or website against an agreed set of design and usability guidelines to highlight usability and design quality issues. Guidelines used within the inspection may include internal brand guidelines and style guides and external guidelines such as usability guidelines, visual design guidelines and operating system guidelines.

A task-based Heuristic Evaluation focuses the inspection to cover the parts of the interface that enable users to complete key user tasks. This type of inspection can highlight and prioritise issues where task completion may be compromised by poor usability or design.

What it provides

A Heuristic Evaluation provides an evaluation report that details a set of prioritised findings where the interface does not meet the agreed set of guidelines. The prioritisation indicates the severity of the findings, where the highest priority findings prevent users from completing a task or may cause brand damage. Low priority findings indicate that the quality of the experience could be improved and may cause lower adoption or errors.