On 17 May 2010, at 15:34, Diego Moya wrote: > Use cases can help a lot both when creating and evaluating a design. > The usability expert is supposed to know as much as possible of the > application context while performing the heuristic evaulation. > > Wikipedia explains it better than me: > "Often the heuristic evaluation is conducted in the context of use > cases (typical user tasks), to provide feedback to the developers on > the extent to which the interface is likely to be compatible with the > intended users’ needs and preferences." > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic_evaluation
It's all mostly-irrelevant and off-topic semantics, but I'd somewhat disagree with Wikipedia :) In usability circles, a review conducted by usability experts following certain use cases would more commonly be called an "expert review". A classic "heuristic review" is purely systematic, taking the design one screen at a time, and running through a checklist of design principles (such as Nielsen's famous ten[1]) for each one, largely ignoring actual usage. Of course, in practice, most reviews tend to end up being a mixture of both techniques anyway -- even if you're doing a strictly-heuristic review, it's hard to completely detach yourself from an intended user's perspective unless you share literally none of their domain knowledge. Cheeri, Calum. [1] <http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html> -- CALUM BENSON, Interaction Designer Oracle Corporation, Ireland mailto:[email protected] Solaris Desktop Team http://blogs.sun.com/calum +353 1 819 9771 Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Oracle Corp. _______________________________________________ usability mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
