Understanding Usability Heuristics: Introduction More Heuristics
Let’s now advance our review of Jakob Nielsen’s fundamental usability heuristics. This guide explores the fifth to tenth items in this ultimate designer’s manifesto. I promise, this will be good!
Jakob Nielsen’s Fundamental Usability Heuristics: The Next 5
These last five heuristics can help you tweak your digital products well enough that users can’t explain why they’re drawn to it.
Recognition rather than recall
Don’t make users think, don’t make them work more than they need to! Sprinkle your app with cues and reminders to help users to complete tasks. Prioritize recognition over recall. Recognition is easier too, because the human brain finds it easier to work in the moment than rummage through the rubble of memory to find a solution.
Flexibility and Efficiency of Use
Shortcuts can speed up interaction, especially for expert users. Yet, options must be available for novice users. People should be able to choose methods that work for them. Good design will offer accelerators like keyboard shortcuts and touch gestures. Customization features also allow users to choose how they want to use a product.
Aesthetic and minimal design
Avoid unneeded information on product UIs. Extra bits of interface information compete with the relevant units of information. This obscures their relative visibility. Of course, you need more than a flat design. However, you need to ensure you keep the content and visual design focused.
Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
While we’ve discussed error prevention, designs are more usable when errors occur and there’s a user-centric approach to handling them. An incorrect login attempt could use an error message to alert the user of the error, identify the nature of the error, and provide options to fix the error.
Help and documentation
Documentation is often necessary to help users understand how to complete tasks. They should be searchable and focused on the user’s task. Asana provides help tips that are relevant, easy to access, and easy to understand.
We have covered all ten fundamental usability heuristic. As you work on expanding UX, be sure to observe these expert principles in action via the UILand library. Our curated screens and user flows expand all the time, so check in here to catch up on what you’ve missed.
