A Comparative Analysis of Heuristic and Usability Evaluation Methods

摘要

Usability testing and heuristic evaluation are two methods for detecting usability problems, or bugs in software user interfaces. Usability testing identifies bugs that impair user performance. It provides a realistic context for the product evaluation, whereas heuristic evaluation does not. Further, it provides an estimate of bug severity, while heuristic evaluation does not. To its detriment, usability testing is more expensive and time intensive than heuristic evaluation. It also tends to overlook bugs that may not affect user performance but may negatively impact the user's perception of product quality. Recently, we have incorporated the best features of these two methods into one procedure which seems to work better than either method alone.