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Software Engineering vocabulary · Testing

Heuristic evaluation

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

nounCommon term

In software engineering, heuristic evaluation means: A review in which usability experts check an interface against a list of accepted design principles, called heuristics, to find problems without testing with users.

In Turkish: sezgisel değerlendirme, buluşsal değerlendirme, uzman incelemesi

How it is used

The best-known list is Jakob Nielsen's ten usability heuristics, such as 'visibility of system status' and 'error prevention'. It is quick and cheap, but it complements usability testing rather than replacing it.

Example sentences

  1. A quick heuristic evaluation found fifteen issues before we even recruited users.

  2. Two designers did a heuristic evaluation of the admin panel separately and then compared notes.

Common collocations

  • conduct a heuristic evaluation
  • usability heuristics
  • heuristic review
  • Nielsen's heuristics
  • usabilityHow easily, quickly and successfully people can use a product to complete a task, and how satisfied they feel while doing it.
  • usability testingA research method in which real users try to complete tasks with a product or prototype while a researcher watches, to find out where they struggle.
  • feedbackThe signal a system gives in response to a user's action, such as a button changing colour, a loading spinner or a success message, so people know what happened.
  • error messageText that a program shows when something goes wrong, saying what failed and sometimes why, for example 'File not found' or 'Connection refused'.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Testing

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