Enhancing the heuristic evaluation (HE) by development and validation of a collaborative design measurement system (CDMS): Collaborative design and measurement system for designers and testers

Heuristic evaluation (HE) is a technique used by usability practitioners (designers and testers) based on heuristics that have been defined for the domain of the Product Under Test (PUT). One of the main problems with the HE approach is the tendency of the practitioners to reuse HE heuristics without assessing its suitability for the different product domains. The purpose of this research is to report a solution in stepwise heuristic evaluation (SHE) by development of Collaborative Design Measurement System (CDMS). This research identifies requirements to develop a CDMS by deriving Information Architecture (IA) to facilitate the SHE measurement method between tester-designer. Subsequently, this paper presents the development of CDMS and the validation of the developed solution with 30 users. The collaborative aspect of the CDMS arises as the system is targeted for both designers and testers who work in teams towards the design, development and testing phase of the product life cycle. Applying a user-centered analysis (UCA) and user-centered design (UCD) approaches, the user requirements were gathered from interviews (10 subjects), then use case diagram and information architecture (IA) were presented. This is used to develop the CDMS. The developed system was then tested using informal usability testing with 30 subjects. A mixed of positive, neutral and negative feedback were received. The results obtained from the testing revealed that the system is usable at the present state, also future improvements would take place at the next cycle of development.