Heuristic Evaluation and Teenagers as Experts

Heuristic evaluation can be described as a usability engineering method for quick, cheap and easy evaluation of a user interface. This method attempts to detect the problems of a system in terms of usability. Most commonly this kind of evaluation is carried out by an expert. However, this paper proposes a different perspective and asks teenagers to become experts and carry out a simplified form of heuristic evaluation. This evaluation was carried out by teenagers on software designed for children and adults. The aim is to define the difficulties with this method adapted by teenagers and to foresee problems of the system. Author