Take Breaks! A Simple Way to Improve Your Heuristic Evaluation Results
Taking breaks during testing can't hurt and may help ...
"As primary tools in the usability field, heuristic or expert evaluations can be rich areas for methods studies and improvement. Early results of one methods study suggest that performing evaluations in limited segments, with breaks between each segment, may increase the effectiveness of the evaluator in identifying usability problems.
One of the ideas behind breaking the evaluation into segments is to overcome the natural fall-off in performance of the practitioner as the evaluation session progresses. By focusing each segment on specific topics, it can reduce the number of criteria a practitioner is attempting to keep in mind during that portion of the evaluation. Even more important, by taking breaks, the potential mental fatigue of the evaluator is interrupted, allowing the individual to “start fresh” at the beginning of each session, almost as if beginning an entirely new evaluation.
The moral of this story? You may find yourself more effective in performing heuristic or expert evaluations if you divide them into sections and take breaks between to refresh your thinking. The approach used in the studies was to divide the heuristics themselves into sets. Using those smaller sets of criteria per session, work for an hour, then get away for 30 minutes or more, whether on a complete break or simply to another type of task. You may find that each time you begin it is with the freshness of mind of a whole new evaluation." continued ... (Via UPA Voice)
"As primary tools in the usability field, heuristic or expert evaluations can be rich areas for methods studies and improvement. Early results of one methods study suggest that performing evaluations in limited segments, with breaks between each segment, may increase the effectiveness of the evaluator in identifying usability problems.
One of the ideas behind breaking the evaluation into segments is to overcome the natural fall-off in performance of the practitioner as the evaluation session progresses. By focusing each segment on specific topics, it can reduce the number of criteria a practitioner is attempting to keep in mind during that portion of the evaluation. Even more important, by taking breaks, the potential mental fatigue of the evaluator is interrupted, allowing the individual to “start fresh” at the beginning of each session, almost as if beginning an entirely new evaluation.
The moral of this story? You may find yourself more effective in performing heuristic or expert evaluations if you divide them into sections and take breaks between to refresh your thinking. The approach used in the studies was to divide the heuristics themselves into sets. Using those smaller sets of criteria per session, work for an hour, then get away for 30 minutes or more, whether on a complete break or simply to another type of task. You may find that each time you begin it is with the freshness of mind of a whole new evaluation." continued ... (Via UPA Voice)
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