Heuristic Evaluation

The TiddlyWiki Thesaurus was evaluated by "expert" users, who used a heuristic evaluation checklist as a guide.

Background and Purpose

A set of criteria was designed to assess the TiddlyWiki Thesaurus across the areas proposed by Nielsen and others, closely following the format of the Heuristic Evaluation System checklist credited to Deniese Pierotti at Xerox Corporation. While our assessment included some generic usability questions, it was also intended to investigate issues specific to the design of the TiddlyWiki Thesaurus. The goal was to create an evaluation that balanced standard questions of web interface design with an investigation of some of the TiddlyWiki Thesaurus's unique features.

The two members of the autumn LIS 537 group (in addition to myself) who had originally used the initial TiddlyWiki Thesaurus were recruited as participants. Each participant was run in a separate evaluation session. They were allowed to spend a brief time becoming reacquianted with the application, and were asked to perform the simple tasks that had been used in the cognitive walkthrough. For the remainder of the session, the participants worked through the heuristic evaluation checklist and shared their thoughts and observations with our team.

Responsibility

Each team member (including myself) participated by taking notes, and contributed to the report.

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