Conducting a heuristic evaluation

Here are my personal questions and thoughts when I conduct a heuristic evaluation.

Have Nielsen's principles next to you
They are usability guidelines to refer when you are evaluating UI design. 

Set the exception 
Write a list of things of expectations when conducting the evaluation.

For example: If you are planning to buy a product online, you expect to see:

• Product information (images and price)

• Call to action

• Checkout (form, address, billing)

• Payment gateway

• Terms and conditions

• Confirmation and email confirmation

If it did not meet your expectation, write down what it lacked and what would help you complete a task.

Set the scenario
Imagine you are a user and you are going to complete a task - walk through the motions. 

• Who are you? Are you an admin, client or just a regular user?

• What is your task at hand? 

• "You heard great things about this website through a friend and wanted to give it a go".

Content and flow 
Try and focus on content and flow first, the design comes in later (unless it becomes problematic in the evaluation).

• Was I able to understand the content and find all the information I need to proceed to the next step?

• Would a person who is English second language understand this content?

• Was there terminology I did not understand?

• Can someone else misinterpret this?

• Was it obvious to find the call to action or did I take too long?

• What was I expecting to see next? Am I stuck? Did I break it?

Design 
The reason why I leave design last is that design is a very objective area. I like to leave design solutions to UX/UI Designers but it always important to ask questions.

• Did the design help me move onto the next step? Or did it confuse me?

• Did the colour give me the wrong impression?

• Did an icon make me think it was something else?

• Is there a colour overpowering and making it difficult to absorb the content?

• What do I think the designer was trying to achieve here?

• When I'm reading the content, does it feel natural? (Not too much head shifting left to right)

• Where do my eyes draw towards and why?

• Did I even bother reading the information on the page?

Technical 
How this could be achieved from a technical perspective.

• Can some of these problems be a technical issue?

• Are there bugs? 

• Can I come up with a long-term fix?

The benefit of this, it helps catches issues on a low budget before being released.