PROJECT
Heuristic evaluation
A Heuristic Lens on Food Sensitivity Interfaces.
October 2024 - June 2024
Explore fearless
There is a kind of failure that feels like failure but is actually calibration. Recognising the difference is hard. Recognising it in the moment almost impossible. In retrospect, of course, completely obvious. That is usually how insight works.
The diary study was the right methodological choice. The app had real UX weaknesses, the personal connection was there, the interest was genuine. What was missing was time. Alongside work and continuing education, recruiting enough users simply was not possible. The system and by that I mean not the app, but the plain reality of everyday life responded. I responded. We did not hold on out of stubbornness. That is rarer than it sounds.
The pivot to heuristic evaluation was logical. Read up, build a structure, align, execute. And then came feedback that was precise and therefore hurt: the criteria had not been unified consistently enough. Small deviations that accumulated until the result was no longer what a heuristic evaluation is supposed to be. Namely: reliable.
One day off. New app. Completely new setup. And this time the process worked which means: this time we knew what to pay attention to, because the first time we had not.
Empathize Holistic
What I carry from this is not the final success. It is the feeling of the second run that quiet, almost pleasantly sober oh, so that is what this is actually about. Methods are not understood when you apply them. They are understood when you apply them a second time with the knowledge of the first failure somewhere between your shoulders and your stomach.
People tend to call that process in retrospect. I call it: having learned without having planned to. Which, if you are honest, is the only way anyone really learns.
