Heuristic Review
Other One Sheeters
What is it?
Heuristics are just rules of thumb – established guidelines against which a site or application can be evaluated quickly. A heuristic review is therefore a quick analysis of potential problem areas, resulting in high-level recommendations for ways to improve the site or service.
(Note that a heuristic review isn’t a replacement for full-scale user interface design. The UI works best when it is based on a cohesive design that has been fully thought-out, reviewed, and tested.
Who uses it?
Product Owners can use a heuristic review to identify quick, high impact improvements to a product (low hanging fruit!).
Business Stakeholders can use a heuristic review to scope and justify larger, more resource-intensive efforts (e.g., fill out a WID).
For Developers, heuristic reviews can function as interaction design patterns – or guidelines that can be reused from project-to-project as UI best practices.
How It Works
- Start whenever! It helps if there has been some discussion about a need for improvements, but a heuristic review can usually uncover unexpected improvements in any product.
- A UI designer will spend a few hours working with the site, reviewing workflow, page structure, control interactions, and navigation, naming, and visual consistency.
- The resulting document will record deviations from recognized standards and explain how a standard can be correctly applied. It will include areas to focus on for quick fixes, as well as recommendations for future improvements.
Getting More Information
- Heuristic Evaluation Methods
from the Usability Body of Knowledge and the UPA
This post is an edited extract from Leah Buley’s site IA One Sheeters with contributions from Tom Dell’Aringa. I am using the One Sheeter concepts here to showcase what I do as an IA and show examples of my work.
