Heuristic evaluation - Use cases

Capian is a collaborative UX audit tool that lets you evaluate the usability of your interfaces by choosing from established heuristics, usability criteria, or custom audit checklists. Evaluate interfaces, share feedback with your team, and collaborate seamlessly to reduce miscommunication and save time.

Heuristic evaluations allow you to uncover usability problems on websites, mobile apps, management systems, ERPs, and other digital interfaces. By relying on well-known sets of ergonomic criteria (Nielsen, Bastien & Scapin, Amelie Boucher), you can collaborate, share your work, and build on proven expertise.

Why conduct a heuristic evaluation?

When a company or organization conducts a heuristic evaluation, the primary goal is to identify the most common usability issues so they can be resolved as quickly as possible. The aim is to improve user satisfaction and experience when navigating an interface (mobile app, web application, website, etc.). These improvements also benefit the employee experience by making their work easier.

A heuristic evaluation is an excellent way to assess your interfaces, thanks to its many advantages:

• Significant time savings
• Reduced costs
• No specialized expertise required to conduct the evaluation
• Clear guidelines to follow based on the chosen heuristics

What is a heuristic evaluation for, and how do you choose between the available heuristics?

A heuristic evaluation is a method that should be carried out before user testing, redesigns, iterative improvements, and similar activities. It highlights the key areas for improvement across your interfaces and helps you better understand the context of the work ahead.

As you progress through your evaluation, you will find that results are not simply positive or negative. You will get positive feedback, but more importantly, you will identify areas that need improvement. Heuristics are widely used because they help you find and resolve issues based on specific, well-defined criteria.

The list of available heuristics is extensive, and it is up to you to choose the ones that best fit your preferences and are easiest to understand and implement.

We recommend using one of the following heuristic frameworks:

• Jakob Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics
• Bastien & Scapin's Ergonomic Criteria
• Amélie Boucher's Heuristics
• Shneiderman's Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design
• Colombo & Pasch's Evaluation Criteria
• Arhippainen's UX Heuristics

These are the most well-known and widely used references for heuristic evaluations. You can also use others or create your own custom heuristics.

Reference: Heuristics available on Capian

When should you conduct a heuristic evaluation?

A heuristic evaluation can be performed at any stage of a project. When a new interface is being developed, it may be wise to conduct the first evaluation at a more advanced stage of the design process. It is entirely possible to carry out multiple heuristic evaluations during the lifecycle of a product. However, be careful not to wait too long, as changes made later in the process can become significantly more costly.

Produce heuristic evaluations faster with Capian

Typically, 2 to 5 experts carry out the evaluation independently, following a selection of heuristics. The experts review the entire site or application and record their observations in a form.

Capian lets you take screenshots of usability issues as they come up during the evaluation, without losing focus or concentration.

To do so, simply click the Chrome extension and quickly and easily document your observations and recommendations, then save. Like magic, the report builds itself – no more manual assembly required.

Here is what it involves:

• Give each observation a descriptive title.
• Add a remark and assign a severity level to indicate its importance.
• Justify the remark using built-in or custom ergonomic criteria, and add your comments. No need to rely on external references — everything you need is in the tool.
• Continue evaluating, or go back to the Capian project report.

Creating an evaluation report with Capian is both easy and thorough. Specifically, a UX expert can:

• Organize evaluations by priority or update them (rename, modify a recommendation, etc.),
• Share the report with colleagues or clients through the built-in commenting system,
• Download an original screenshot, or all project illustrations, with a single click,
• Import one report into another, making it easy to merge multiple projects into one when needed. To keep a copy of the original project before making changes, the UX expert can clone or duplicate it.

The tool makes it easy to share information and enables multiple contributors to collaborate on a single report. The evaluation and report production process has never been simpler than with Capian!

Ideal for ergonomic audits, expert reviews, heuristic evaluations, and more — Capian is built for UX professionals.

Feel free to try a free heuristic evaluation!