Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed: gathering experts' feedback while performing heuristic evaluation with a list of heuristics targeted at older adults

Abstract

This paper discusses the topic of evaluating systems for health and entertainment when specifically targeting the older adult population. Building upon and extending on two previous studies that used a well-known discount usability evaluation method, heuristic evaluation, as well as a list of heuristics specifically created to evaluate smartphone apps that keep older adults' needs and characteristics in mind, this paper presents the assessment of the previous aggregated list of heuristics by ten experts after using it. Results show that the list of heuristics used in our previous studies does receive a positive assessment by the ten evaluators in terms of their appropriateness, completeness, usefulness, and clarity. Moreover, this paper reinforces that despite being a conventional and mature method, heuristic evaluation does offers valuable feedback regarding user interface flaws.