There was a good panel at UPA last week about this very topic
("Heuristic Evaluation - Uses and Abuses"). On the panel were Jakob
Nielsen, Kyle Soucy, Rolf Molich, and Chauncy Wilson.The points made at the panel echo what people have already written above, but I'd encourage you to look at the proceedings when they come out later this month (though I'm not sure what gets archived for a panel). Some of the points I remember: - Rolf Molich distinguishes the techniques by saying that in expert review the reviewer incorporates his/her "considerable expertise" rather than just evaluating against a fixed list of heuristics. So I think that in practice, ER is basically a broadened, more flexible/inclusive version of HE, and (obviously) it requires that the evaluator has expertise. - Molich also said that he has found that in practice, when people say they're doing heuristic evaluation they're really doing expert review. In other words, nobody blindly looks at just the heuristics. (My take-away from the panel was "don't do heuristic evaluation if you're a robot.") - Jakob Nielsen said that heuristic evaluation was never meant to be an end in itself, just a discount method that's better than doing nothing. And his 10 heuristics were never meant to be a complete list, just a starting point. - Everyone seemed to agree that if you have an evaluator with expertise then by all means do an expert review instead of a heuristic review. - Molich thinks it's important to use the correct terminology, but I think it's fair to say that to some in the audience (including me) the difference in terms seems a bit academic. A lot of people seem to use them interchangeably, and even the UPA's own body-of-knowledge site seems to confuse the terms. For more details on how to actually perform ER/HE, I'd check out usability.gov, Jakob Nielsen's site, Bruce Tognazzini's (TOG) first principles of interaction design, and STC's usability resources. Kevin http://www.touchusability.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=42932 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
