Usability Heuristic Measures Makeover Success

Written by Rhiannon Gallagher | 03 June 2010

One of the tests that we perform when we are evaluating websites is a Usability Heuristic. A heuristic is, roughly, “a common sense rule (or set of rules) intended to increase the probability of solving some problem.”

Our set of usability heuristics is a web-focused version of the original software heuristic checklist developed by Deiniese Pierotti at Xerox in the early 1990s. We have been working with this checklist for more than 10 years, on hundreds of websites and web applications.

Here are 5 reasons we use a heuristic checklist to evaluate a website’s usability:

1. It is rational. By applying a set of standards that was developed long before we saw your particular website, we remove a lot of emotion from the evaluation.
2. It is consistent. We can apply the same set of criteria to a site before and after redesign or to multiple sites that compete with each other. This can lead to insights to give your site a competitive edge.
3. It is specific. The heuristic forces you to measure things like the numbers of fonts and font sizes used, where it might be tempting to glance and assume things are fine.
4. It promotes accessibility. Sites that are involved with government contracts technically have to be compliant with Section 508 of the ADA. Many of the basic Section 508 criteria are included in our checklist, so failure here can suggest the need for more in-depth accessibility analysis.
5. It is quantitative. Usability analysis is primarily based on qualitative techniques, which don’t always sell well to corporate bean-counters. But the checklist provides a way to numerically enunciate the usability of a site, and often helps stakeholders to seek out further usability testing.

Using the heuristic evaluation, we can see where we are improving a site. For example, idealresponse.com had an 8% success rate on our formatting heuristics originally. There were problems with emphasis, color usage, number of attention-getting techniques used, and font formatting. On the revised site, it scored 66%, a HUGE improvement. It still failed on the use of ALT tags for images, which is a Section 508 requirement, but because it is no longer conveying meaning through the images alone, that problem is less of an issue. If they do want to pursue government contracts going forward, the heuristic provides an easy guideline for us to begin a full Accessibility Evaluation.

Usability is a big deal. A website with poor usability will fail to capture the attention and engagement of the visitors. At SolutionPipe, we provide a full range of usability measures and consulting. Complete the form on this page to be contacted by our representative.