Evaluating a Methodology to Establish Usability Heuristics

Assessing usability in any software product may be a key factor for predicting its success or fail. Heuristic evaluation is the most commonly used usability evaluation method. It uses a set of recognized usability design principles (heuristics). Until now, the Nielsen's ten usability heuristics have been widely used. However, such heuristics are too general and currently it is necessary to provide new sets of heuristics for evaluating specific kinds of applications. Through a survey, applied to a group of researchers, it was possible to analyze the pertinence of formalizing a methodology for establishing specific usability heuristics that could improve usability assessments.