A10: Heuristic Evaluation
Hunter McCormick
April 9, 2025
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This week’s task departed from the traditional design activities we usually complete for an assignment and instead embraced cognitive science through heuristic evaluation usability testing. By focusing on the three tasks I used to design my high-quality mockups (completing a minigame, asking a chatbot for help, and joining a professional community) I identified eight usability improvements needed to make my designs the best they can be. I found issues related to consistency and standards, error prevention, recognition rather than recall, visibility of system status, flexibility and efficiency of user, and aesthetic and minimalist design.
Using the basic design principles of discoverability and understanding, I pretended to be a nascent BadgerWorks user completing the tasks. I would ask myself questions about the screens like “how may I navigate this screen” or “Does this icon signify a specific capability?” It was here that I realized my buttons could be standardized. Some buttons labels had action verbs and a subject like “Claim XP” while others were just verbs like “Start” or “Cancel.”
This assignment provided me an opportunity to dig deeper into my designs and evaluate each screen with a fine-tooth comb in a way that I hadn’t considered before. It was challenging to spend time on each screen and review each of the ten heuristic principles over and over again. I was pleasantly surprised to discover I had a pretty solid inclusion of user freedom and control in my designs by including back buttons when needed. Aside from my personal screen designs, I look forward to performing a heuristic evaluation during my internship this summer to improve the usability of public service web pages.
