FREE 4+ Heuristic Evaluation Worksheet Samples in PDF | DOC

It is referred to as usability testing when specialists conduct independent walkthroughs of user interfaces to assess their usability and report any flaws that they discover. Usability testing involves the use of rules of thumb to assess the usability of user interfaces and report any flaws that are discovered. We use well-established heuristics (such as Nielsen- Molich’s) when evaluating products in order to uncover insights that can be used by design teams to improve the usability of their products from the very beginning of the development process. Usability experts use these insights to help design teams improve the usability of their products.

You’ll learn how to conduct a heuristic review on every user interface design that you come across in your professional life. Using the techniques described in this article, you will be able to create and conduct your own heuristic evaluations, which will allow you to improve the usability, utility, and desirableness of your designs. In order to get started, we recommend that you review the heuristic evaluation worksheet samples that we have provided for you later in this section. After getting a feel for the document, its appearance, and its functionality, you are welcome to use these samples as guides or even as templates when writing your own version of the document.

4+ Heuristic Evaluation Worksheet Samples

1. Heuristic Evaluation Worksheet

2. Heuristic Evaluation Team Worksheet

3. Sample Heuristic Evaluation Worksheet

4. Heuristic Evaluation Definitions Worksheet

5. Standard Heuristic Evaluation Worksheet

What Is a Heuristic Evaluation Worksheet?

A new trend in the design community is to encourage the development of design-specific heuristics that can be applied to evaluating products, systems, websites, and other similar endeavors as part of the overall design process. Due to technological advancements since Nielsen and Molich developed these heuristics in the 1990s, they are less applicable to many of the items that are currently available for purchase on the market. Consider designs intended for online communities or mobile devices where the working environment is constantly changing, rendering Nielsen and Molich’s heuristics inappropriate for evaluating usability in these situations. Despite the fact that modern designs have their own set of capabilities and limitations, the original heuristics are still, to a significant extent, applicable today. Therefore, it is critical that you, as a designer, become proficient in incorporating Nielsen and Molich’s design heuristics into your work as a starting point for your work as quickly as possible. Because Nielsen and Molich’s heuristics should not be allowed to become dominant in the process, their 10 rules of thumb should be used to inform and inspire the development of specific heuristics by designers and businesses, rather than dictating the process with Nielsen and Molich’s heuristics. Market research, other design criteria, and customer needs, in conjunction with the application of your company’s or product’s specific heuristics, will aid in the improvement of the suitability of the design being considered.

How To Write a Heuristic Evaluation Worksheet

Because each design has its own set of goals, restrictions, functions, styles, and other variables, there are no hard and fast rules for how to come up with new heuristics or how to use them. There are no set rules because each design has its own set of goals, restrictions, functions, styles, and other variables, so there aren’t any hard and fast rules that everyone should follow. They usually only look at between five and ten things in heuristic evaluations, which are chosen because they are important to how easy it is to use a system that is being looked at. Less than five criteria may not be strict enough when looking for problems and issues. Using more than ten criteria may be too much for the evaluator, who will have to keep all of the criteria in mind while looking at the design. The criteria may be in conflict with each other and the heuristics may be in conflict with each other. To start, follow the steps below to make and run your own heuristic evaluation.

• Establish an appropriate list of heuristics
  Nielsen and Molich’s ten heuristics will help you get started on your own creative process. Then, use Ben Shneiderman’s eight golden rules to get started on your own process. Always use them with other design guidelines and market research to make sure they work.
• Select your evaluators
  When you pick evaluators, make sure they are chosen with a lot of thought and careful attention to the small things. Users who aren’t testers should not be in the target market. Typically, they should be usability experts, with a preference for those who know a lot about the industry where your product is being used, rather than generalists who don’t know a lot about that industry. For example, a point-of-sale system for the restaurant industry should be looked at by someone who knows at least a little about how a restaurant works.
• Brief your evaluators
  It’s important for them to know what they need to do and cover during their evaluation period so that they can do well on it. To make sure that all of the assessors get the same information, the briefing sessions should be the same. Otherwise, you might find that their evaluations are influenced by the information they get. It is possible to ask that the evaluators only focus on a certain set of tasks in this brief. However, they can also say which tasks they will cover based on their own experience and knowledge, if any, in this brief.
• First evaluation phase
  First, the type and complexity of a product determine how long it takes for the first appraisal to be done. On average, this takes about two hours. In order for the evaluators to get a sense of how the project works and how big it is, they can use the product freely. Following that, they will choose which parts they want to study more closely.
• Second evaluation phase
  During phase two of the evaluation process, the evaluators will apply the heuristics that they have chosen to the items that they found in phase one. This is how it works: Besides looking at individual parts, the assessors would look at how well they fit into the whole design.
• Record problems
  Evaluators must record their own problems, or you should record their problems as they do their jobs so that you can keep track of any problems they have. You should record the evaluators’ problems as they do their jobs so that you can keep track of any problems they run into. Make sure that when you record problems, the assessors are as clear and thorough as possible in their documentation.
• Debriefing
  The debriefing session is a time for the assessors to work together to write down their findings and come up with a complete list of problems. They should be encouraged to think of possible ways to solve the problems they have had by using the heuristics they have learned.

FAQs

A good heuristic evaluation report should include one or more of the following: the following: Checklists: There are many ways to summarize your findings in your report, but you can show how closely the findings have been followed by using a checklist or grading system (like a scale of 1 to 10). This will show how well heuristic standards have been followed.