Nielsen's Heuristics
01 Definition
Nielsen's Heuristics meaning: Ten broad rules of thumb used to evaluate and improve interface usability.
Nielsen's heuristics are ten general usability principles proposed by Jakob Nielsen, such as visibility of system status, match between system and the real world, user control, error prevention, and consistency. Evaluators use them to inspect an interface and flag likely usability problems without full user testing.
Also called
Why it matters
How Nielsen's Heuristics fits the work
These heuristics give teams a fast, low-cost checklist to catch obvious usability problems early, before spending time and money on formal user testing or development.
In context
During a heuristic review, the team flagged the checkout for hiding system status because it gave no confirmation after the payment button was pressed.
Practical note
Heuristic evaluation finds many issues but not all, and reviewers can flag false problems. It complements real user testing rather than replacing it, and several evaluators find more than one.