Top Usability Heuristics
Jakob Nielsen has given the 10 most famous usability heuristics, which are used for the user interface designs and act as a guide for Heuristic Evaluation.
- Visibility of system status
- Match between system and the real world
- User control and freedom
- Consistency and standards
- Error prevention
- Recognition rather than recall
- Flexibility and efficiency of use
- Aesthetic and minimalist design
- Help users recognise, diagnose and recover from errors
- Provides help and documentation
With these usability heuristics, usability inspection is made very simple and easy to follow.
Steps in Heuristic Evaluation
As we are aware of the benefits of Heuristic Evaluation, now we shall delve into the steps involved in heuristic evaluation.
Come up with a plan
Planning is the foremost part of any successful action; Heuristic Evaluation employs three methods to test the interface. They are:
Formulate a set of tasks, which are critical for the site’s success and then it should be tested by the evaluators.
Provide evaluators the objectives and also allow them to develop their own tasks. A goal is given to the evaluator, where they can go ahead and break down the goal into finer tasks and test each of them.
Dialog elements should be assessed by evaluators thoroughly and in-depth as it is the window of the website.
The choice of the method depends on the individual, where time, evaluators, etc., would be taken into consideration, which is the core of planning.
After planning then comes the selection of evaluators, which forms the basis of heuristic evaluations. The number of evaluators depends upon the cost factor of the company. More the number of experts mean more number of usability problems would be identified. Those with experience identify a greater amount of usability problems than with people who have less or no experience. Heuristic evaluation is known to find more than 90% of usability problems if 3 to 5 experienced people perform it.
Thus it is always better to employ the right combination of experts along with novice to get the best result.
Advantages of Heuristic Evaluation
- Economical - Cheap in comparison to other evaluation methods, where the process requires a few testers, thereby lesser use of resources in terms of cost, time and expertise.
- It easily prompts what should be done and easily attracts potential evaluators to use this method (Nielsen & Molich, 1990).
- Progressive planning is not required (Nielsen & Molich, 1990).
- Evaluators do not require formal usability training. In their study, Nielsen and Molich used professional computer programmers and computer science students (Nielsen & Molich, 1990; Nielsen, 1992).
- Can be used at an early stage of the development process (Nielsen & Molich, 1990).
- Faster turnaround time than laboratory testing (Kantner & Rosenbaum, 1997).
Website Content – A deciding factor…
Let me start of with the familiar proverb “First impression is the best impression.”
This holds good wherever it is and it is the most important and deciding factor for the success of the product.
The product being a Website, the content of the website should be error free, otherwise it may drastically pull down the quality of the site as well as the product. Be it any site, it should be blemish free or else it would in turn lead the end user to assume or come up with a notion that this site is not the right one as it already contains errors.
A website content is one, which should be short, crisp and up-to-the-point, where the end user is able to understand it at one shot. The lengthier the content, greater would be the extent the user leaves the site.
The common issues which we come across with the website content are spell errors, punctuation mistakes and grammatical errors, which is the regulating factor in the quality of the website content. Let’s just see a few examples of grammatical errors and punctuation errors.
When the right word is not used at the right place. The word ‘complimentary‘ means an appraisal or given for free, whereas ‘complementary‘ means as a part of. We always say ink and pen are complementary to each other and not ink and pen are complimentary to each other, which is incorrect.
Punctuation marks are very important as it convey, what one wants to express, whether the person wants to question, exclaim, command, etc. The intonation of the sentence is distinctively evident with the help of the punctuations and it is very critical for a website content, which gives a clear-cut meaning. Content should never be monotonous as it would allow the reader to exit from the website halfway through. Let’s see this sentence, Hang him not pardon him. This sentence looks unexplainable as the meaning is not clearly conveyed, but then with the use of punctuation the meaning totally changes like ‘Hang him not, pardon him.‘ or ‘Hang him, not pardon him.‘
Just the addition of a comma changes the meaning of the sentences, which clearly proves to be a boon and an added advantage to your website content. Keeping in mind, all the above said points if the website content is framed, definitely your website would have a flawless quality content and will always have a better stand among other websites.
Give us your website content (English Only), Here in QC BOSS – We ensure quality on your website content too.
We check Missing Content | Typo Errors (Both in Text & Alt Tags) | Spelling Errors (Both in Images & Text) | Grammatical Errors (Both in Images & Text) | Casing Errors (Upper Case/Lower Case) | Spacing Errors (Check for unwanted extra space between words) | Repetition of Content (Words/Lines) | Bad Breaks.
With QC BOSS ploughing your content, you would be a proud owner of a perfect website.
A stop to glance through…
Software Testing and Usability Inspection is a must, here’s why…
Be it Software Testing and Usability Inspection, individually each one have their own importance and relevance. Software Testing and Usability Inspection are complementary to each other and thus the fineness of the end product is dependent on each other. As the Roman proverb goes “No man acquires perfection all at once.” which clearly reveals that both Software Testing and Usability Inspection is required.
Aware, the product developed should be user-friendly, involves less complexity, suits the customer’s needs, and also defect free.
Usability means how better something can be used over the purpose it has been created for, any changes suggested by the usability experts at the time of usability inspection, are the most crucial points that can change the stand of the system in intended/end user’s view. Usability Testing can be performed at each stage of development and after the final product is complete.
Software testing reveals the bugs; Usability inspection reveals the usability issues. We feel both should be implemented at the right time.
Usability testing can be very economical if planned properly, yet highly effective and beneficial.
What they said…
“Over the last year online banking has attracted 6.3 million users, but a massive 3.1 million of those have closed their accounts already due to poor website design and inefficient service”.
- Internet Money Issue 4
“Usability techniques allowed a high-tech company to reduce the time spent on one tedious development task by 40%.”
- Bias & Mayhew, 1994
“Bad design can cost a Website 40 percent of repeat traffic. A good design can keep them coming back. A few tests can make the difference.”
- Kalin, 1999
“Usability goals are business goals. Websites that are hard to use frustrate customers, forfeit revenue and erode brands.”
- McCharty & Souza, Forrester research, September 1998
“Design changes due to usability work in one project at IDS/American Express resulted in savings of $45 million.”
- Chalupnik & Rinehart, 1992
“Measure twice, cut once.”
- Norm Abram, This Old House
Be it any queries, QC BOSS is here to answer all of them in one go.
