Heuristic Evaluation

Yesterday we evaluated the interface design of some of the tools that UHI provides for their students through a heuristic evaluation. In both individual and group sessions we gathered a lot of information about possible usability problems within these tools.

Heuristic evaluation (Nielsen and Molich, 1990; Nielsen 1994) is a usability engineering method for finding the usability problems in a user interface design so that they can be attended to as part of an iterative design process. Heuristic evaluation involves having a small set of evaluators examine the interface and judge its compliance with recognized usability principles (the "heuristics").

More info about this method can be found on: http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/