Overview
These recommendations are the outcome of an undergraduate final project in Design, carried out at the Federal University of Technology – Paraná (UTFPR), with a view to greater inclusion of people with visual impairments in higher education.
This section presents the methodological instrument that gave the set its form: the heuristic. It defines the concept, presents the heuristic model, and gathers the models of heuristics in ergonomics and design that served as references for the exploration that produced the 12 recommendations.
Heuristic
The ancient Greek word ‘heurískō’ (meaning to discover, to find) gave rise to the expression ‘eureka’ (meaning "I have found it!"), attributed to the Greek mathematician Archimedes (287 to 212 BC). That term also gave rise to the word ‘heuristic’, which in Portuguese has two grammatical classifications: a noun (‘I will use a heuristic as a strategy to solve this problem’) and an adjective (‘I will use a heuristic approach to solve this problem’) (PEZZINI, 2020).
According to the same author, the first studies of heuristics began in the 1940s with the American economist Herbert Simon, who later received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1978. Simon devoted himself to investigating why people often opt for satisfactory solutions rather than pursuing ideal ones. He suggested that decision-making is a cognitive process that occurs almost constantly in human life and involves weighing varied factors, in contrast to the limitations of general intelligence, accuracy of perception, time available and information available.
Later, studies of heuristics gained prominence from the 1970s onwards, when the Israeli psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman developed an understanding of cognitive perspectives. They argued that those perspectives profoundly influence how people think and make decisions. Where Simon sets out human limitations in the capacity to make fully rational decisions, Tversky and Kahneman introduce concepts relating to human thought processes, illustrating the strategies the brain uses to make choices.
A heuristic is therefore understood as a mental shortcut: a cognitive strategy for solving problems and making decisions in complex scenarios, where information is plentiful, varied, incomplete or uncertain. This approach seeks to save resources such as time, energy and mental effort, prioritising efficiency over perfection and providing quick answers — even if they may be imprecise — reliably and conveniently.
Rather than seeking an ideal solution, the heuristic promotes quick, approximate, probable or satisfactory solutions, often based on general rules, patterns or common sense. The underlying idea is to simplify rules that make life easier, allowing people to solve problems without the need for extensive, deep judgement. The heuristic is an intuitive and unconscious characteristic inherent in human beings, grounded in experience, in ways of thinking, in creativity, in imagination and in divergent thought. It can be applied deliberately and consciously as a problem-solving technique or, more automatically and intuitively, as behaviour oriented towards an effective resolution (PEZZINI, 2020).
Heuristic Model
Heuristic methods are practical, rapid procedures for finding emergency solutions to specific problems. One of the first heuristic methods was proposed by George Pólya, a Hungarian mathematician, in 1945, in the book "How to Solve It", which explores how mathematicians reach their conclusions. Some of the heuristics prescribed in the book include: draw a diagram when the problem is not solved; try reverse engineering when the solution is not found; turn an abstract problem into a concrete example; and approach a problem in a more general way at first before focusing on the specific (PEZZINI, 2020).
Heuristics in Ergonomics and Design
Heuristics in Ergonomics and Design consist of guidelines that make it easier to develop products, services and systems, prioritising usability and user experience. The aim is to ensure that crucial aspects of performance are considered, always with a focus on users’ needs and wishes, without limiting the team’s creativity, innovation and adaptability. The main convergence between heuristics, ergonomics and design lies in the emphasis on the human being and on delivering practical solutions for real people (PEZZINI, 2020).
In this context, Pezzini (2020) argues that heuristic analysis offers several advantages:
[...] beginning with the optimisation of resources. It sets criteria centred on the needs and wishes of the audience directly for the project team, in a way that saves time, effort and talent. It allows alternatives to be generated, tests to be run and feedback to be obtained more productively and swiftly, so that a solution can be deployed more precisely and reliably. At the same time, it does not require many people, many resources, or special software. Another advantage of heuristic analysis is its flexibility of application — that is, it can be applied at various points in a project. In a redesign project, for instance, an analysis can be carried out right at the start to understand where the design and usability problems lie and to help the team avoid repeating the same mistakes in the new version being designed. It can also be done at more advanced stages, to evaluate a prototype being tested, or to analyse the user experience of competing products. Finally, heuristic analysis is an effective and efficient method for finding the most basic usability problems in a system, and can be combined with complementary methods.
A number of models can therefore be consulted as references for defining the heuristics that may be employed in a project. In this work, the principal ones are the results of authors such as:
| Authors | Year | Heuristics |
|---|---|---|
| Sidney Smith and Jane Mosier | 1986 | The 5 guidelines for designing user interface software. |
| Ben Shneiderman | 1986 | 9 golden rules of design. |
| Donald Norman | 1988 | The 6 principles of everyday design |
| Soren Lauessen and Houman Younessi | 1988 | 5 usability factors |
| Jakob Nielsen and Rolf Molich | 1990 | The 10 usability heuristics |
| Jan Dul and Bernard Weerdmeester | 1991 | 7 heuristics of human–machine dialogue |
| Alan Dix | 1993 | The 14 principles of usability |
| Christien Bastien and Dominique Scapin | 1993 | 8 ergonomic criteria for evaluating human–computer interfaces |
| Preece et al. | 1994 | The 11 human–computer interaction heuristics |
| Jeffrey Liker and Ann Majchrzak | 1994 | 9 heuristics in the design process for properly conceiving the human–technology infrastructure |
| Apple Computer, Inc. | 1995 / 2014 | Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines |
| Gregg Vanderheiden | 1997 | The 7 principles of universal design |
| Theo Mandel | 1997 | 12 non-functional requirements |
| Patrick Jordan | 1998 | The 10 usability recommendations |
| ISO 9241:10 | 1998 | 7 dialogue principles |
| Neto et al. | 2000 | Development and evaluation of multimodal web interfaces — a case study with usability principles |
| Simone Diniz Junqueira Barbosa | 2002 | 5 requirements for models supporting HCI design |
| Lari Karkkainen and Jari Laarni | 2002 | The 8 design heuristics for small display screens |
| Preece et al. | 2002 | 6 interaction design heuristics |
| Kent Norman | 2003 | The 16 interface and functionality design heuristics |
| Bruce Tognazzini | 2003 | The first principles of interaction design |
| Brigitte Borja de Mozota | 2003 | The criteria of "good design" |
| Elisabeth Fátima Torres and Alberto Angel Mazzoni | 2004 | 10 principles of usability and accessibility |
| Jeniffer Ferreira | 2005 | The 7 semiotic heuristics |
| Tuncer Oren and Levent Yilmaz | 2005 | The quality principles for the ergonomics of human–computer interfaces in modelling and simulation software |
| Chorianopoulos | 2008 | 8 design principles for television graphic interfaces |
| Pinelle et al. | 2008 | The 10 usability principles for video game design |
| Walter Cybis | 2010 | 6 ergonomic principles and recommendations for designing programmes and applications for interactive TV |
| Neema Moraveji and Charlton Soesanto | 2012 | The 10 rules for building usable interfaces |
| Frederick van Amstel and Paulo Jorge Sousa | 2012 | 14 heuristics for evaluating university portals |
Table description
Table 5, "The heuristic models available in ergonomics and design", is organised into three columns: "Authors", "Year" and "Heuristics". The table lists chronologically thirty models of usability guidelines published between 1986 and 2012. Among the models catalogued are the 5 guidelines of Sidney Smith and Jane Mosier (1986), the 9 golden rules of Ben Shneiderman (1986), the 6 principles of Donald Norman (1988), the 10 heuristics of Jakob Nielsen and Rolf Molich (1990), Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines (1995/2014) and the 7 dialogue principles of ISO 9241:10 (1998), extending to more recent models such as the 14 heuristics for evaluating university portals by Frederick van Amstel and Paulo Jorge Sousa (2012).