A heuristic evaluation reviews an interface against established interaction principles without requiring a full user study.

Evaluators inspect realistic tasks and look for problems such as hidden system state, inconsistent behavior, weak error recovery, unnecessary memory demands or controls whose purpose is difficult to infer.

The method is useful early because it can identify common design problems quickly and can be repeated cheaply as the interface changes.

A heuristic finding should describe the concrete interaction problem and its consequence rather than merely cite a rule. “The user cannot tell whether saving finished” is more actionable than “visibility heuristic violated.”

Several evaluators often find more issues than one because each notices different paths and assumptions.

Heuristic evaluation does not replace observation of real users. Experts can predict many problems, but only representative use reveals which assumptions actually fail in context.