Evaluation and testing is an important part of your Website development process. Usability tests gather data about the usability of your site by a group of users performing specific tasks. In this website you will learn the following:

• What is Heuristic Evaluation?
• How can you conduct a Heuristic Evaluation on your website?
• How can you report the findings from your Heuristic Evaluation?

This website also includes a list of online resources and books about this topic.

1. Of or relating to a usually speculative formulation serving as a guide in the investigation or solution of a problem: “The historian discovers the past by the judicious use of such a heuristic device as the ‘ideal type’” (Karl J. Weintraub).
2. Of or constituting an educational method in which learning takes place through discoveries that result from investigations made by the student.
3. Computer Science. Relating to or using a problem-solving technique in which the most appropriate solution of several found by alternative methods is selected at successive stages of a program for use in the next step of the program.

Heuristic Evaluation (originally proposed by Nielsen and Molich, 1990) is a discount method for quick, cheap, and easy evaluation of the user interface.

The process requires that a small set of testers (or "evaluators") examine the interface, and judge its compliance with recognised usability principles (the "heuristics"). The goal is the identification of any usability issues so that they can be addressed as part of an iterative design process.

Heuristic Evaluation is popular in Web development circles because it requires few resources in terms of money, time or expertise. So any developer can enjoy the benefits of usability testing - not just those with thousands to spend on a professional assessment. Heuristic Evaluation is characterised by:

• Small test scenarios that use paper mock-ups or screen shots, which can easily be changed from one test situation to the next
• 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

Next: How to conduct a heuristic evaluation? >

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Last updated February 17th 2002