Limitations of Heuristic Evaluations

In a heuristic evaluation, experts are sometimes ‘overly critical’ and provide only feedback on the problematic aspects of the interface, as this usability method really focuses on mistakes and not on overall feedback (positive and negative).

Although experienced in the field of (interface) design, your ‘experts’ need to have at least some experience with heuristic evaluation and must consider things like having the appropriate target audience in mind when judging the design of your site or interface.

And, of course, this is a purely qualitative usability method and can only provide a guide line based on usability best practices but does not substitute (rather complement) quantitative user tracking when the project is finally in use.

Conclusion about the Usability Method Heuristic Evaluation

Heuristic evaluations are the perfect usability method for testing and reviewing design concepts in a very early stage of a project (e.g. on a wireframe basis). Thus the feedback comes at the right time (before detailed design or even programming has started), still being possible to be considered in the next design phase. And with a heuristic evaluation you collect a lot of helpful insights to create customer centric design with rather limited effort.

Readings and Recommendations

To perfectly enable heuristic evaluations in an early stage of your project, interfaces should be sketched with a wireframing tool. Some of them even have the technical solution integrated to conduct heuristic evaluations remote via internet. Just google for things like “usability wireframe tool” .