We previously understood how Heuristic Evaluations could be an effective template to evaluate the usability of a product. While Jakob Nielsen’s heuristic guidelines is most widely used, in order to create a more effective heuristic model for a product, an individual needs to have more in depth understanding of the audience and purpose of the product in question.
According to Todd Ohanian ” [Jakob Nielsen’s Heuristic Guidelines] are broad rules of thumb and not specific usability guidelines.” (1). Ohanian and Rich Staats (2) focuses on 10 particular heuristics from Nielsen’s guidelines that best applies to Web Design in particular:
- Visibility of System Status: users need to understand the status of the website they are using. For example, if their site is loading, a loading icon would help them understand that they’ll need to wait for content to load. “The user should be informed in where they are within the application flow”
- Match Between System & the Real World: The language and content used on the website should be easily understood and familiar to the user.
- User Control & Freedom: The users should be able to move and switch between content easily. For example, keeping a home icon that takes the user back to the original page gives the user the freedom to go back to the home page anytime they wish. Another example, a WordPress user could easily access a bunch of pages through their index and profile icon.
- Consistency & Standards: The use of a consistent design scheme is the basics standard design principles. According to Ohanian “All pages in a site should have a consistent format that follows an internal flow and designing to meet standards allows your site to be accessible via most platforms.”
- Error Prevention: A good user interface should fundamentally warn users before they make errors. For example, Gmail produces a warning before a user sends a mail without a user, or content in order to make sure that the user doesn’t accidentally forward an unintended mail. Another example, most widely used is the use of red underlines on words that the computer believes has incorrect spelling or grammar.
- Recognition Over Recall: A good web page should enable the user to navigate through the web interface without using a surplus of mental effort. One of the simplest ways of doing this is by making simple and recognizable web functions on the page that would enable the user to achieve their desired actions, as opposed to using their own memory and ‘Valuable Mental Real Estate’.
- Flexibility & Efficiency of Use: Nielsen encourages the use of ‘accelerators’, which are ‘”features that speed up the application interaction for experts but are unseen by less familiar users.” A great example of this are keyboard shortcuts. We see a lot of websites and web applications nowadays that allow users to use quick keyboard commands that allow users to achieve their objectives in and flexible and efficient manner.
- Aesthetic & Minimal Design: One of the core design principles is minimalism: the action of removing everything except the elements that would be considered necessary and wanted by the user. According to Staats “Every extra unit of [information] competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.”
- Helping Users Recognize, Diagnose & Recover from Errors: Users are eventually going to end up making mistakes. They might for example, misunderstand how to use your webpage/web application, or they may have simple forgotten to save their work before quitting their browser. While a part of heuristics is to prevent errors, not all errors can be predicted or fixed effectively. In those instances, allowing users to undo their mistakes may not be possible. Notifying the user on what to do, and communicating with them in simple, easy-to-understand language would be a much better move.
- Help & Documentation: Although most websites are built to be simple to use, it might be difficult to predict user behavior. Therefore, a lot of web designers and developers provide tutorials, steps and FAQ’s in order to help the user navigate and use their product effectively.
Steven Douglas, on the other hand, give his own take on a Heuristic Model, more specifically for UI design (3). According to him “UI design is less about making something look [attractive] and more knowing how to create a valid path from idea to execution, backed with statistics and evidence, for the benefit of our users. ” He states that, even though Jakob Nielsen’s 1994 Heuristic guidelines have been more ubiquitous, they are not the only one available. “There are even guidelines from 1986 which include over 944 heuristics.” I his model he states that UI designers should:
- Strive for Consistency: This is essentially similar to Nielsen’s principle of ‘Consistency & Standards’ . Douglas states that “UI designers should ensure that any prompts, dialogue boxes, and menus should all share the same characteristics. The same is to be said of [color], typography and layout.“
- Keep Users in Control: Douglas states that users should not encounter any unnecessary surprises during their experience with your product. “Users need familiarity. [When] a user wants information, it is best to just give it to them when they want it”. Ultimately, UI designers want make users feel that they are in control of how they use the product.
- Reduce User’s Minimum Steps: This is fairly similar to Nielsen’s principle of ‘Flexibility & Efficiency of Use’ and ‘Recognition over Recall’. Ultimately, if a user want to get from point A to Point B, the UI should enable them to with as much ease as possible.
- Allow Users to Know Where They Are: A designer would always want their users to easily navigate from page-to-page without getting lost. The addition of a home button or an index page could be a simple example of helping users navigate a webpage. However, navigation could get a lot harder to simplify if the user wishes to access periphery UI options.
- Avoid Obtuse Language: This is similar to the Nielsen’s Principle of ‘Match Between System & Real World.’ The UI should speak in the user’s language, by avoiding excessive jargon and esoteric language. It would be more effective for the designers to use familiar terms and real world concepts in order to allow their audience to generally engage better with the product.
- Make The UI Aesthetically Appropriate: Two of the fundamental principles of design are contrast and repetition of design elements. in other words, effective design requires visual appeal from contrasting visual elements, and uniformity/consistency by repetition of elements. Although Douglas states that a designer should prioritize function over ‘attractiveness’, aesthetics is a huge part of cultivating a positive user experience. According to Weinschenk and Barker (4), UI design should maintain ‘aesthetic integrity’ and be tailored to appeal to its intended audience.
- Present New Information with Meaningful Aids to Interpretation: This is a somewhat similar principle to Nielsen’s principle of ‘Match between System & Real World.’ Essentially users may not always be familiar with how to navigate and use a UI. However, by presenting UI elements in way familiar to the real world can help maximize User efficiency and utility. Douglas gives the example of desktop folders that hold files. “[They] are not really folders, but they have visually represented this way for users to understand concepts, systems and frameworks more easily.“
While we do see a lot of similarities between Nielsen’s and Douglas’ heuristic models, they prioritize principles and explain them a bit differently. This is because, user experience is fundamentally subjective in nature, and the only true way of understanding how to maximize usability and utility is through subjective understanding. In his article, Staats stated that “[Heuristics] don’t aim to provide the best possible answer, rather a good enough answer.“
(2) https://www.secretstache.com/blog/usability-heuristics/
(3) https://usabilitygeek.com/usability-heuristics-ui-designers-know/
(4) https://www.cheatography.com/davidpol/cheat-sheets/weinschenk-and-barker-classification/
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