Everything you need to know about Heuristic Evaluation- Part 1

A great design isn’t something that just looks visually appealing to the eyes but also possesses strong usability. How the information is presented to the users, how effective it is to help them accomplish their tasks, and how easily they can reach the desired outcome- all these things are crucial as far as a product’s usability is concerned. And that’s where Heuristic Evaluation steps in to ensure that the product not just looks awesome but captures usability extremely well and delivers a seamless user experience. Needless to say, well-designed products hold excellent usability, and since it contributes significantly to a product’s quality, it boosts the user experience.

Related: What is UX Testing and Why You Should Invest in it?

What is Heuristic Evaluation?

Heuristic Evaluation or Heuristic Analysis is a process wherein a product’s user interface (UI) is assessed thoroughly to measure its usability. The primary purpose involves detecting the usability issues that users may encounter while interacting with a product, and finding ways to address them. The term was coined by Jakob Nielsen along with Rolf Molich in 1990, however, the final set of heuristics that are still used today were released by the former in 1994.

Heuristics are design principles that encompass best practices, thumb rules, and standards that have been tested and followed over a long period. Design experts compare a digital product’s design to these principles, identify the areas where it is not matching them or find flaws that the design team overlooked, and then craft solutions accordingly.

Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics

The general usability principles, also called Heuristics, published by Jakob Nielsen are-

1. Visibility of System Status

This principle states that the design of the product should inform users about the ongoing operations within a reasonable amount of time so that they can easily grasp the context or the information and not get confused. A perfect example of this would be the progress bar on a checkout page. A progress bar lets the users know which stage of the checkout they are present at and how many more stages they need to go through to place a successful order.

2. Match between system and the real world

This heuristic means that the interaction between the system and the users should sound real and natural so that the users can easily relate to it. For example, the icon of a recycle bin is similar to that of a real bin and thus users can easily perceive its use. Also, the design should speak the user’s language. Avoid using jargon that can get difficult for the users to understand. Make use of easy words and plain language. This would encourage them to interact with the product elements comfortably and not feel hesitant or intimidated.

3. User Control and Freedom

Users should be provided with complete control and freedom so that they can use a product in their own way. Users often make mistakes while interacting with a digital product or perform an action accidentally. Therefore, they should be able to fix the unwanted action without having to go through a complicated process. This would mean having an undo/redo option or a cancel/exit button. For example, in the Gmail app, when you move an email into the trash, it displays a message “Conversation moved to trash, Undo” which allows the user to easily restore the mail if it got deleted by mistake.

4. Consistency and Standards

There needs to be consistency in the design and it should follow the standards that have been set up for a long time. If consistency is not maintained, it may raise confusion in the user’s mind and also create unfamiliarity. Designers need to stick to the industry and platform conventions. If you look at Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo Mail, you will notice that all the navigation elements are placed on the left-hand side. Irrespective of which platform you use, there won’t be any sort of confusion because of the consistency maintained in other similar platforms. Now, if someone launches a similar application with navigation elements on the right side or anywhere else, users would feel uncomfortable interacting with it. Put simply, there has to be the consistency of language, layout, and behavior.

5. Error Prevention

Error messages make sense and are effective too but the best designs are those that prevent errors from occurring in the first place. Designers must ensure that the potential errors are kept to a minimum, so either they should try to eliminate the error-prone situations or design the system in such a way that it recognizes the possible errors and presents users with a confirmation option before they proceed further to their task. For example, in Gmail, if you use the word “attachment” inside the email content but haven’t attached any file, a popup would appear indicating that you wrote ‘attachment’ in your message but there are no files attached. In this case, it is showing a possible error and providing a suggestion at the same time.

6. Recognition rather than Recall

This signifies that the interface design should be such that people can easily recognize the information in it rather than having to remember it. Users shouldn’t have to put stress on their memory. As humans tend to have short-term memories, it is ideal to create user interfaces that encourage recognition and minimize the cognitive load.

Keep the task-related information on the user’s screen while they explore the interface. For example, in Photoshop, when a user browses different fonts, a real-time preview is displayed at the right as they move from one font to another. This makes their job pretty easy as they do not have to remember what each font looks like.

7. Flexibility and Efficiency of Use

Designs should be made keeping in mind the expert users as well as the novice ones so that it can cater to both. In some apps that require an email address and contact number, you may have noticed that the text keyboard automatically switches to the number keyboard when a user moves from the email field to the contact field. This is quite beneficial for novice users. On the other hand, things like touch gestures, accelerators, and shortcuts provide the flexibility to the experienced ones to customize the interface as per their liking.

8. Aesthetic and Minimalist Design

Display only relevant information to the users. Avoid cluttering your website or app. Any sort of information that is unnecessary, irrelevant, or rarely needed will distract users from their primary objectives. Ensure that the content and the design elements focus on the essentials and keep users hooked to their end goals. Don’t let anything turn away their focus from the purpose.

Google homepage is the best example of this heuristic. Why do people come to Google? To search for something, right? “Search” is the purpose of the users and that’s why they have kept only a search bar on their home page and nothing else. This is what we call a minimalistic design.

9. Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors

Not all users are smart. So, if in case they commit any error, the error messages should precisely indicate what mistake they made. It should be in plain language which the user can understand along with what can be done to rectify that mistake immediately.

Let’s say you are registering on a website. The website asks you to set up a password. You create one but a message appears that you can’t use a special character or haven’t used the lower case. At times, the website itself will suggest you a password to use so that you don’t waste much time creating a password and register as quickly as possible. Understood what happened here? The website not only identified the error but also suggested a solution. That’s the ninth principle in a nutshell.

10. Help and documentation

Although designers do aim to design the system in such a way that demands no additional explanation and users can navigate without any help, it is imperative to provide documentation that can guide them through the steps they need to take to solve the issues they are facing. This type of information must be easy to search for so that the users can easily navigate whenever they require any support and get their queries addressed as soon as possible.

If you browse the “customer service” section on the Amazon app, you will notice that it is divided into different segments so that the user can conveniently choose what they need help with. There’s help related to the orders, payments, refunds, and more.

That’s all about Jakob’s Nielsen ten Heuristics. Read about the pros and cons of heuristic evaluation, and how to conduct the heuristic evaluation in part 2.