JultikaUniversity of Oulu repository

User experience became a buzzword in the mid 90’s after it was conceived. It quickly took over the previous position of usability as the leading term to cover the interactions between man and machine. Heuristics, originally created to assess usability in systems were adapted to try and evaluate the experience which is drawn from the interaction with the systems. However, usability and user experience differ from one another with many aspects. While the heuristic evaluation is procedurally similar when evaluating usability or user experience, the fundamental differences between the two challenge the applicability of the method itself. The aim of this thesis is to take a critical look at usability and user experience evaluation using general usability heuristics created by Nielsen and Molich in 1990 and user experience heuristics created by Arhippainen in 2009. This thesis will explore the challenges and advantages that heuristic evaluation of systems usability and user experience encompasses. This is done by reviewing relevant literature and by conducting two case studies for evaluating Facebook’s usability and user experience. This thesis will eventually present that the original advantages of heuristic evaluation of systems usability are mostly applicable to the UX heuristics with minor differences. However some additional challenges concerning the subjective and temporal nature of user experience are discovered when applying the UX heuristics. This thesis will also suggest that using heuristic evaluation to evaluate systems user experience is recommended not alone, if possible, but in conjunction with other methods.