1. Usability Inspection
Method: Heuristic Evaluation

2. What is Usability Inspection
1. Name for a set of methods
2. It is in contrast to usability testing
3. Requires a small set of testers (or “evaluators”)

3. Usability Inspection Methods
Heuristic evaluation
Heuristic estimation
Cognitive walkthrough
Feature inspection
Pluralistic walkthrough
Consistency inspection
Standards inspection
Formal usability inspection

4. Cooper
Software should be interested in me
Software should be forthcoming
Software should be confident
Software should have common
sense
What heuristic is?
Nielsen
Visibility of system status.
Match between system and
the real world.
User control and freedom.
Consistency and standards
Error prevention.
Krug
Don't force me your way
Save me steps whenever
possible

5. Heuristic Evaluation
It involves having a small set of evaluators
it requires just few resources in terms of money, time or expertise
It is a usability engineering method for finding usability problems

6. Heuristic Evaluation
It is difficult for a single individual to do
The more evaluators the better!

7. Heuristic Evaluation
Recommended are 3 to 5 evaluators
Each individual evaluator inspect the
interface alone
The session lasts 1 or 2 hours
The output is a list of usability
problems in the interface

8. Characteristics of Heuristic Evaluation
Small test scenarios
An informal basis for assessment that doesn’t require psychologists
A high success rate – so only a handful of testers are needed
A few key guidelines

9. How to conduct ?
1.Plan Your Evaluation
Develop a set of tasks and ask your evaluators to carry them out.
Provide evaluators with the goals of the system, and allow them to develop
their own tasks.
Ask evaluators to assess your dialogue elements.

10. How to conduct ?
2.Choose your Evaluators
Those with experience
Those without experience
Heuristic Evaluation is known to find more than 90% of usability problems if it’s performed by 3 to 5 experienced people

11. How to conduct ?
3.Review the Heuristics

12. How to conduct ?
4.Conducting the Evaluation
Individual Evaluation
Group Evaluation

13. How to conduct ?
5.Analysing your Results
Compile all the information from your evaluators
Remove any duplicates and combine similar issues