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Heuristic usability evaluation

A heuristic usability evaluation is when a usability expert reviews a website, web application or web content against a set of content quality and content performance criteria to identify strengths and areas for improvement.

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When to use

This technique can be used:

  • To do an assessment of existing content prior to baseline usability testing to identify potential problem areas to explore during testing
  • To identify potential problems, and to fix them, prior to testing proposed content with users
  • After usability testing to assess problems that arise during testing
  • In cases where usability testing is not possible
  • In one-off or regular reviews of content to ensure that it continues to meet best practices

Who is involved

Lead
Content designer, content strategist, ux researcher or interaction designer
Others who may help
The person leading the assessment may also seek input from other disciplines, including content designers, content strategists, ux researchers, interaction designers, visual designers and web developers

How to do it

There are 4 steps in this activity.

  1. Prepare for your review

    Before you start, make sure that you have a complete inventory of the content that you'll be reviewing. Prepare a table or spreadsheet to record your findings.

  2. Review and evaluate the quality of the content

    Conduct a page-by-page or section-by-section review of the content and evaluate it against the criteria listed here. Make notes on the strengths and problem areas.

    Information architecture and navigation

    • Logical place in architecture
      • Has a logical primary location within the canada.ca information architecture
      • Is easily findable
    • Appropriate cross-links
      • Content is linked to from other relevant places within the Agency's web content and on other parts of canada.ca if appropriate
    • Logical organization of content
      • Pages are organized in a logical fashion with a focus on task-completion and matching the user journey

    Refer to information architecture principles for more guidance on how to identify usability problems.

    Page layout and design

    • Appropriate design patterns
      • Uses the most recent canada.ca design patterns
      • Uses a design pattern that is appropriate to the content type
    • Aesthetic and minimalist design
      • Focus on the essentials
      • Do not clutter up the page
      • Make sure you leave sufficient white space
    • Logical structure
      • Content follows the inverted pyramid style
      • Divided into meaningful and relevant subheadings
      • Doesn't include vague sections, such as “related links” and resources”
      • Avoids using FAQs

    Refer to visual design principles for more guidance on how to identify usability problems.

    Content

    • Clear content objectives
      • The audience and purpose of the page is clearly communicated through the header and page content
      • Content is written in a way that considers the needs of the audience
    • Plain language
      • Uses words, phrases and concepts that are familiar to the user
      • The reading level is appropriate for your audience (generally aim for Grade 8 level)
      • The content is direct, informative, conversational and professional
    • Follows style guidelines
      • The content follows requirements for titles, lists, tables, punctuation, links, images and more
    • Actionable
      • Content is focused on helping users to complete their tasks, including those using assistive technologies
      • Instructions are clear, concise and have logical concrete steps.
      • Background information is minimal and not put in the user's way
    • Up to date
      • Provides the most current information
      • Doesn't talk about the past in the future tense
    • Correct terminology
      • Uses correct and approved words and phrases
      • Ensures consistent vocabulary across the Agency's products and services
      • Uses terminology that is inclusive and doesn't cause harm
    • Appropriate use of alerts
    • Unique
      • Content doesn't duplicate other existing content on the CRA website or on other parts of canada.ca
    • Complete
      • The content covers all of the key information that users need to complete their tasks

    Interactive functionality

    For applications or for content with interactive elements (checklists, wizards, etc), check for the following:

    • Minimizes the user's memory load
      • Makes elements, actions and options visible
      • Offers help in context, rather than making users seek it out in another place
    • Users informed of status
      • Users are informed about what is going on and where they are within a process
    • Designed for expert users and new users
      • Provides relevant short-cuts or customization to speed up interactions for expert users, while still providing all required context and instructions for new or infrequent users.
    • Help users avoid errors
      • Limiting users choices (helpful constraints)
      • Offer suggestions (for example, use auto-suggest)
      • Use logical defaults (such as Canada as the country)
      • Use forgiving formatting (such as accepting phone numbers or postal codes in different formats or automatically formatting them as users type)
    • Help users recover from errors
      • Error messages are prominently displayed, in plain language, tell users what went wrong and offer a solution

    See interaction design principles for more information on how to identify usability problems.

    Accessibility

    Many of the usability best practices listed here also help make the content accessible to all users. Beyond the factors already mentioned, the following are some key considerations for accessibility:

    • Proper formatting of page title
      • The title is found in the <title> tags in the html.
    • Accessible links
      • Hyperlinks are written in a way that is meaningful to the user and describes what they are linking to
      • Do not give links names that do not make sense out of context, such as “click here” or “more information”
    • Operable user interface and navigation
      • Users can navigate through the content effectively and efficiently using a keyboard, screen reader, mobile device, etc.
    • Visual content has text alternatives:
      • Images have meaningful alt-text
      • videos have transcripts and/or closed captioning

    Refer to W3C accessibility principles for more information on how to identify usability problems.

  3. Assess the severity of your observations

    Take the list of problems identified in the previous step and assign a level of severity to them.

    • Severe: It is a usability problem that will prevent users from successfully completing the task
    • Major : The usability problem will hinder, slow down or annoy users
    • Minor : Goes against best practices, but is unlikely to cause problems for most users

    When assigning a severity level, consider:

    • Is it common or rare?
    • Can users overcome the error or will they be stuck?
    • Is it a one-time problem or will the same user face the issue repeatedly?

  4. Summarize findings

    Prepare a summary of the key findings from the review of the content. Illustrate and analyze the severe and major issues (for example, use an annotated screenshot outlining the issue) and list the minor issues.

Next steps

The results of the heuristic usability evaluation is used as an input into determining user tasks for improvement, along with:

Deliverables and artifacts

When you're done, you should have:

  • A table or spreadsheet with the detailed results
  • A summary presentation, document or board highlighting the key findings

Reference material

This activity is part of the:

Go to all the phases of the user-centred design process.

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