Adapting heuristic analysis for conversational UIs

A wide range of possible issues can be found with a good set of heuristics. Heuristic evaluations can range from formal to informal. The more formal approach is to enlist three to five usability experts as evaluators. Once provided context and the background of the tasks and users, they can independently evaluate the experience against their understanding of the heuristics. By documenting the issues, scoring their importance, and compiling the results from each reviewer, the team can prioritize the issues to be addressed. This approach can be used to look at UI issues, and much of this can also be used to understand conversational interactions.

These issues will not be found in surveys that provide a score, such as the Net Promoter Score (NPS) or the Software Usability Score (SUS), covered in the next chapter. NPS or SUS can be applied once customers are exposed to the product; a heuristic evaluation of a working prototype has some...