SUMMARY
Purpose: Heuristic Evaluation is a lightweight, expert-led usability inspection method used to identify usability issues in a user interface based on established heuristics.
Design Thinking Phase: Test
Time: 45–60 min session + 1–2 hours analysis
Difficulty: ⭐⭐
When to use:When you need quick feedback from usability experts without setting up a full user studyDuring high-fidelity prototyping to catch usability issues before launchBefore stakeholder demos or usability tracking to improve polish
What it is
Heuristic Evaluation is a usability inspection method where evaluators review a product interface against recognised usability principles—often Nielsen’s 10 heuristics—to identify any usability issues. Conducted by usability experts, it’s a fast and cost-effective way to uncover friction in the design before user testing begins.
📺 Video by NNgroup. Embedded for educational reference.
Why it matters
Heuristic Evaluations offer product teams a fast, objective lens on interface usability, often catching issues that analytics and session recordings can miss. This method brings human-centric critique early in the development cycle—when it’s cheapest to fix—and helps teams validate design consistency, clarity, and feedback affordances before expensive user testing or engineering effort is committed.
When to use
- When preparing for a usability test and want to catch low-hanging UX issues first
- During design sprints to validate UI assumptions quickly
- For audits of live products or MVPs to guide future iteration cycles
Benefits
- Rich Insights: Helps uncover user needs that aren’t visible in metrics.
- Flexibility: Works across various project types and timelines.
- User Empathy: Deepens understanding of behaviours and motivations.
How to use it
- Step 1: Recruit 3–5 usability experts with varied domain familiarity.
- Step 2: Provide a set of key tasks and flows to evaluate, ideally aligned with core use cases.
- Step 3: Each evaluator independently reviews the interface against pre-defined heuristics such as Nielsen’s 10.
- Step 4: Aggregate findings across evaluators, categorising by severity and frequency.
- Step 5: Translate findings into actionable design recommendations and short-term UX debt items.
Example Output
Flow analyzed: Mobile signup and onboarding
Key findings:
- Heuristic: Visibility of system status – Users receive no visual feedback while processing signup.
- Heuristic: User control and freedom – No clear way to cancel onboarding after first step.
- Heuristic: Error prevention – Default birth date is preselected and leads users to submit invalid age by mistake.
Suggested changes:
- Add a visible progress indicator during server response delays.
- Provide an “exit onboarding” option in top nav.
- Remove birthdate defaulting or add validation alerts early.
Common Pitfalls
- Evaluator bias: Ensuring evaluators represent varied mental models – too much domain familiarity can skew results.
- Over-indexing on heuristics: Heuristics are guides, not rules—don't ignore context-sensitive insights just because they don't map 1:1.
- Skipping synthesis: Without a cross-evaluator discussion, results may be redundant or inconsistent.
10 Design-Ready AI Prompts for Heuristic Evaluation – UX/UI Edition
How These Prompts Work (C.S.I.R. Framework)
Each of the templates below follows the C.S.I.R. method — a proven structure for writing clear, effective prompts that get better results from ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, or any other LLM.
C.S.I.R. stands for:
- Context: Who you are and the UX situation you're working in
- Specific Info: Key design inputs, tasks, or constraints the AI should consider
- Intent: What you want the AI to help you achieve
- Response Format: The structure or format you want the AI to return (e.g. checklist, table, journey map)
Level up your career with smarter AI prompts.Get templates used by UX leaders — no guesswork, just results.Design faster, research smarter, and ship with confidence.First one’s free. Unlock all 10 by becoming a member.
Prompt Template 1: “Run a Heuristic Review on a Signup Flow:”
Run a Heuristic Review on a Signup Flow:
Context: You are a Senior UX Designer evaluating a mobile app’s signup and onboarding flow.
Specific Info: The flow includes email authentication, password setup, and interest selection. Drop-off is high after Step 2.
Intent: Identify key usability issues using Nielsen’s heuristics and recommend design fixes prioritised by severity.
Response Format: Table with columns: Heuristic Violated | Description of Issue | Suggested Fix | Severity (1–3)
If any task step is unclear, ask follow-up questions. Then propose one improvement idea that aligns with accessibility or performance.
Prompt Template 2: “Audit an Existing Dashboard for Heuristic Violations:”
Audit an Existing Dashboard for Heuristic Violations:
Context: You're a Product Designer reviewing an analytics dashboard used by operations managers.
Specific Info: The interface contains charts, filters, export tools, and context cards. Usage logs show confusion around filtering.
Intent: Uncover usability issues using Jakob Nielsen’s 10 heuristics to improve learnability and task completion.
Response Format: List each heuristic, summary of violations, and 1–2 recommended usability fixes per violation.
Ask clarifying questions if domain conventions or user context are not clear. Suggest one follow-up idea for improving onboarding.
Prompt Template 3: “Build a Heuristic Evaluation Checklist for Onboarding Flows:”
Build a Heuristic Evaluation Checklist for Onboarding Flows:
Context: You’re leading a heuristic review session for a product’s new user onboarding journey.
Specific Info: The journey spans 4 steps — account creation, preferences, intro tour, and trial activation.
Intent: Create a focused checklist aligned with Nielsen’s heuristics that prompts reviewers to spot friction.
Response Format: Bullet list grouped under each heuristic with specific areas to observe.
Prompt for unknowns like device constraints, language use, or common edge cases.
Prompt Template 4: “Rate Usability Issues by Severity with UX Rationales:”
Rate Usability Issues by Severity with UX Rationales:
Context: You’ve completed a heuristic evaluation and need to prioritise fixes for the dev team.
Specific Info: You’ve identified 9 issues ranging from colour contrast to ambiguous icons.
Intent: Categorise them using a 3-tier severity matrix (Minor, Major, Critical) and add UX rationale.
Response Format: Table with Issue Description | Severity | UX Justification | Suggested Fix
Ask for missing context like product stage, accessibility requirements, or user personas before proceeding.
Prompt Template 5: “Compare a Prototype Against Accessibility and Heuristics Together:”
Compare a Prototype Against Accessibility and Heuristics Together:
Context: You're reviewing a pre-launch web prototype for legal compliance and UX.
Specific Info: Components are custom-designed but no formal a11y testing has occurred.
Intent: Cross-reference accessibility guidelines (WCAG 2.2) alongside Nielsen’s heuristics to flag overlapping issues.
Response Format: Matrix grid with: Component | A11y Issue | Heuristic Violated | Combined Risk | Priority
Suggest a follow-up to validate fixes through screen reader and keyboard nav testing.
Prompt Template 6: “Create a Heuristic Evaluation Template for Remote Reviewers:”
Create a Heuristic Evaluation Template for Remote Reviewers:
Context: You're the design lead coordinating an async heuristic evaluation with 4 remote teammates.
Specific Info: Evaluators will open screens in Figma and type findings in their own copies.
Intent: Produce a fillable template that guides consistency and depth in observations.
Response Format: Editable table or checklist grouped by screen name and heuristic category.
Ask if reviewers need examples or calibration questions before starting.
Prompt Template 7: “Identify Heuristic Violations Influencing Drop-off Rates:”
Identify Heuristic Violations Influencing Drop-off Rates:
Context: You’re combining behavioural analytics with UX review on a multi-step checkout.
Specific Info: Conversion drops 18% between cart review and payment entry.
Intent: Use heuristics to explain why users may abandon flow and suggest design improvements.
Response Format: List of observed violations + hypothesis + data signal + proposed fix.
Clarify if there is heatmap or session-recording data to enrich findings.
Prompt Template 8: “Map Violated Heuristics to Developer Jira Tickets:”
Map Violated Heuristics to Developer Jira Tickets:
Context: You’ve documented issues from a heuristic evaluation and now want to help PMs log them in Jira.
Specific Info: You use the “bug” and “UX debt” labels to separate triage.
Intent: Generate user-story format summaries that map heuristics to actionable units of work.
Response Format: User story format x template, with optional heuristic name and acceptance criteria.
Ask how story point estimation or sprint boundaries will be handled.
Prompt Template 9: “Review Empty States Using Emotional Design + Heuristics:”
Review Empty States Using Emotional Design + Heuristics:
Context: You're examining empty state screens for a mobile productivity app.
Specific Info: Screens exist for no tasks, no data sync, and no calendar items.
Intent: Evaluate tone, cognitive load, and clarity using heuristics + positive UX patterns.
Response Format: Screen-by-screen table with Emotional Tone | Heuristic Violations | Message Suggestions
Suggest 1 follow-up variant using visual metaphor or microcopy improvement.
Prompt Template 10: “Create a Training Guide for Junior Designers to Run Heuristic Reviews:”
Create a Training Guide for Junior Designers to Run Heuristic Reviews:
Context: You’re mentoring a junior team through their first heuristic evaluation.
Specific Info: The team is reviewing a finance dashboard using Nielsen’s heuristics.
Intent: Help them understand how to evaluate objectively and make confident recommendations.
Response Format: Step-by-step guide with an example UI, reflection questions, and heuristics definitions.
Add one best-practice tip for leading a group discussion post-review.
Recommended Tools
- Usefathom: Interview and usability capture tool with AI summaries
- Figma Heuristic Evaluation Plugin
- Optimal Workshop: IA and usability tools
- WAVE: Web accessibility evaluation tool
