This semester I have a class which examines foundational literature in Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Each week we have a topic and have been asked to write a short response or position on a question related to the topic. These responses could be interesting to those who are interested in HCI or would like to know more about the real science behind usability and design. I’ve decided to share some of my responses here on my blog.
Question: What principles and techniques can be used to evaluate interfaces?
Keywords: Heuristic evaluation
Heuristic evaluation is a method of using heuristics, generalized guidelines or principles, as a way of rating a product or process. In the case of usability engineering, heuristics used in evaluation are based on common design principles. The usability engineering industry tends to use a collection of 10 basic heuristics which were developed by Molich and Nielsen (1990). A usability expert will use these heuristics to help guide a formal evaluation of a product in order to discover usability issues.
When comparing heuristic evaluation to other usability evaluation methods, researchers have found that this method has clear benefits. Steves et al. (2001) found a heuristic evaluation found some of the same issues as a user-research method and provided complementary data to the data found in the user-research study. Ssemugabi and de Villiers (2007) found that a heuristic evaluation with four experts found nearly all of the issues a 61 participant end-user evaluation found, in addition to other critical usability issues.
However, it must be noted that heuristic evaluations are sensitive to the number of “experts” used to collect data and 3-5 experts seem to produce the best amount of data compared to the cost (Nielsen and Molich, 1990). Even with 3-5 experts, the method is still possibly low cost compared to the cost of a user study, which as previously stated, still will not provide as much usability data for analysis. This method is popular in industry because of its ease to conduct, value of data collected, and low cost Hollinsed and Novick (2007).
Hollingsed, T. and Novick, D. G. (2007). Usability Inspection Methods after 15 Years of Research and Practice. In proceedings of ACM SIGDOC 2007, 249-255.
Molich, R. and Nielsen, J. (1990). Improving a human-computer dialog: What designers know about traditional interface design. Communications of the ACM 33(3):338-348.
Nielsen, J. and Molich, R. (1990). Heuristic Evaluation of User Interfaces. In proceedings of ACM CHI 1990, 249-256.
Steves, M. P., Morse, E., Gutwin, C., and Greenberg, S. (2001). A Comparison of Usage Evaluation and Inspection Methods for Assessing Groupware Usability. In proceedings of ACM GROUP 2001, 125-134.
Ssemugabi, S. and de Villiers, R. (2007). A Comparative Study of Two Usability Evaluation Methods Using a Web-Based E-Learning Application. In proceedings of ACM SAICSIT 2007, 132-142.
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