"Heuristic evaluation is an essential element of systems' development".
BT302 - Assignment 2
"Heuristic evaluation is an essential element of systems' development"
Jakob Nielsen (1990) describes heuristic evaluations as "a systematic inspection of a user interface design for usability", with its goal being "to find the usability problems in the design so that they can be attended to as part of an iterative design process".
Heuristic evaluation is based around the theory of the usability of a system (computer program or website etc.), developed by Jakob Nielsen and Ralf Molich as "a method for structuring the critique of a system using a set of relatively simple and general heuristics" (Abowd, 1994). It is traditionally thought of as a function that must be carried out by a group to enjoy more of the benefits of feedback from various evaluators. Around 5 evaluators can usually discover 75% of a systems usability faults according to Nielsen (2003). Abowd (1994) describes heuristic evaluation as a "design time evaluation technique", as it is easier to fix many problems with a system at the design stage.
In relation to the statement "heuristic evaluation is an essential element of systems' development" and its relevance, it is best to first look at the benefits of using a heuristic evaluation. UsabilityNet (2003) outlines the five following benefits of this technique:
"Heuristic evaluation is an essential element of systems' development"
Jakob Nielsen (1990) describes heuristic evaluations as "a systematic inspection of a user interface design for usability", with its goal being "to find the usability problems in the design so that they can be attended to as part of an iterative design process".
Heuristic evaluation is based around the theory of the usability of a system (computer program or website etc.), developed by Jakob Nielsen and Ralf Molich as "a method for structuring the critique of a system using a set of relatively simple and general heuristics" (Abowd, 1994). It is traditionally thought of as a function that must be carried out by a group to enjoy more of the benefits of feedback from various evaluators. Around 5 evaluators can usually discover 75% of a systems usability faults according to Nielsen (2003). Abowd (1994) describes heuristic evaluation as a "design time evaluation technique", as it is easier to fix many problems with a system at the design stage.
In relation to the statement "heuristic evaluation is an essential element of systems' development" and its relevance, it is best to first look at the benefits of using a heuristic evaluation. UsabilityNet (2003) outlines the five following benefits of this technique: