IDIA 612 - Heuristic Analysis and Re-design

For assignment one, we were asked to pick from a set of websites (of course, I asked to do one of my own choosing) and perform a heuristic analysis and re-design of that site. It was useful to learn how to perform a solid heuristic analysis.

My large conclusion from this assignment was that, generally, these two activities should not be paired. That is, a heuristic analysis seeks to make usability improvements in site (or application) design. If that’s what you are after — or if you don’t have the time or money to commit to an actual re-design, then this might be an approach to use. If you really want to re-design a site, then you need to go back and do a task analysis, cognitive walk-through, etc. to understand user goals and needs.

Another small learning point, if you at all have the possibility of a domain expert who is trained to perform either of these tasks — your analysis and / or re-design has a much better chance of success. Either that, or someone very careful and clever about extracting information from a domain expert.

With no further ado, here is my paper in which I actually do re-design a site, but also develop a novel heuristic in so doing. My next post will focus on that heuristic.

Wireframe re-design of gpsies.com.