“How to Conduct a Comprehensive Heuristic Evaluation: A Step-by-Step Guide”
One of the primary skills expected of a product designer is to be able to evaluate the usability of a product. Only then can the designer change/ improve it to achieve necessary metrics! Below is a step by step know how:
What is Heuristic Evaluation?
Heuristic evaluation is an inspection method that involves improving the usability of a product by identifying and prioritizing issues faced by a user while using your product.
Simply, it involves evaluators examining an interface against a set of predefined usability principles or heuristics.
*As a capstone for 1st module in UX. Collej Intensive Course TM founded by Prasad Kantamneni*
At what stage of the UX process can we conduct a Heuristic Evaluation?
Heuristic Evaluation can be done at every stage of the design process.
We will be focusing on the after Post-Launch Stage. (When the product already exists and is being used)
How will learning Heuristic Evaluation help me (Product Designer), you say?
Most importantly, good design can only be created if one can critique and find issues with the existing one!
How is it done?
There are multiple Heuristic Laws to follow, but as a standard I follow the 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design by Jakob Nielsen
Explanation through execution:
As a capstone project, we were made to identify the usability issues for the website: Seascanner
Step-1: Understanding the Product- What is Seascanner?
Seascanner is a travel agency specializing in cruises. It is an online cruise booking website that helps cruisers/ passengers find and book finest cruises around the world at affordable prices
Step-2: Identifying Usergroups
Let us categorize people who travel, in the most relevant way, according to type of groups:
Step-3: Identify Experiences
There are many experiences that make up a product but we have to identify which experiences are most important for an online cruise booking website so that users can achieve their final goal of going on a cruise
Step-4: Prioritize UserXExperience
After identifying both the user groups and their experiences, we have to find the overall priority score (experience+usergroup) to define scenarios and perform an evaluation
The above 3 steps are necessary so that you go into a timed evaluation with a logical direction in mind, and select the right scenarios to solve for.
Step-5: Identifying Relevant Scenarios
Let us understand how to create a scenario:
- Context: What is the context a user uses the product in? E.g. Worried and looking for help, Excited to plan a good trip ideas, etc..
- Goal: What does the user want to achieve? E.g. Get the best treatment, get the best suggestions, etc..
- Actions: How does the user use the product to achieve the end goal? E.g. looking for a good doctor, looking for trip ideas, etc…
Step-6: Identifying Heuristic Violations
Let us understand how violations are identified:
(Tip: Think about all the steps our user, Lucas might take to achieve his goal. Walk a mile in the users shoes!)
Experience: Browsing/Searching for a Cruise
Scenario1: (Context) Lucas is planning on taking his wife (above 30 years, couple usergroup) to a romantic cruise getaway as a surprise for their anniversary in February
(Goal) and wants to book a round trip to a popular cruise destination, Caribbean on a highly rated cruise line
(Actions) He visits seascanner.com for the first time in search of a romantic cruise vacation.
Homepage: User starts going through the homepage trying to search for good quality cruise in mind.He might look for couples related things, For this flow we have the above identified issues.
Experience: Checking Cruise Details
Scenario 2: (Context) Lucas finds a few cruises which interest him and (Goal) wants to see the details and compare before finalizing a cruise. (Action) He opens the cruise detail pages to start comparing
Cruise Finder Page: Lucas open caribbean cruise details page and sees the facilities, cost, etc and compares with others to finalize an option.
Experience: Booking the Cruise
Scenario 3: (Context) After comparing, Lucas decides to select the the Caribbean Norwegian Getaway and (Goal) wants to start booking process. (Action) He opens the booking and accodomation page and starts entering details.
Cruises Booking Page: The users want to see details of a particular cruise (Caribbean cruise) and see if this cruise is the right fit. They generally want to see cruise dates and itinerary, offers, conditions, images, etc.
These are some of the identified heuristics.
Step 7: Prioritization and Presentation:
Prioritization:
We can find numerous such errors during the evaluation, but it is not possible to address everything at once. For this, we prioritize the issues based on their impact.
Presentation:
Remember to structure it, so that every error is explained properly and what impact it has on the usability of the website, inturn affecting the business.
Once the prioritization is done. You can review it with stakeholders and other designers to make your product more usable.
Step 8: Recommendations
So why do we go through the whole process of identifying violations? To make changes and improve the usability.
For every heuristic violation that you identify and prioritize, you should provide a relevant recommendation
Summary:
- Understand the Product
- Identify the major/ important experiences and prioritize according to business
- Identify usergroups and prioritize them according to the business
- Always prioritize identified violations. (tip: there can be more than 1 violation for a flow)
- Present violations, such that stakeholders, designers, etc are able to understand the impact easily.
- Provide recommendations (they should never suggest a solution)
That’s all folks!
Would love to see your comments and inputs! You can view all my projects here: https://gktanmayee.framer.website/