MENTAL MODEL · M8439

Heuristic Evaluation

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Updated 2026-08-15

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INTRODUCTION

English translation pending.

CORE DEFINITION

Heuristic evaluation was developed by Jakob Nielsen and Rolf Molich, and it is organized around a small set of usability principles such as Nielsen's ten heuristics. Its core proposition is that trained evaluators inspecting an interface against explicit principles will surface most of the significant problems without recruiting users, which makes it a fast and inexpensive first pass. The key qualification is coverage: a single evaluator finds only a fraction of the problems, so the method depends on using several independent inspectors and merging their findings.

SCAFFOLDING EFFECT

psychology

Reduce cognitive load

- Use evaluator panel: recruit three to five independent inspectors rather than relying on one. - Use principle walkthrough: check the interface against each heuristic in turn. - Use finding merge: combine results and deduplicate before deciding what to fix.

anchor

Anchor fast decisions

An interface's problems are largely invisible to the people who built it, because they know how it is meant to work and supply the missing context automatically. An outside evaluator has to work out the intended flow from the screen alone, so the points where that reconstruction fails are the points where users would fail. Checking against explicit principles makes the inspection systematic rather than impressionistic. Because each evaluator misses different problems, the union of several independent inspections approaches the set a user test would reveal.

MINIMUM ACTION

In progress 0/1

Practice this model in one real situation:

Recruit three to five independent evaluators who did not build the interface. 2. Have each one walk through the interface against every heuristic separately. 3. Merge the findings and remove duplicates across evaluators. 4. Rank the merged problems by severity and fix the highest ones first.

Check to track your progress (stored locally)

Learning progress0%

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Source support: Explicit

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en.wikipedia.orghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic_evaluationZH · Explicit
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