The heuristic evaluation process consists of 4 phases:

• The preparation phase
• The evaluation phase
• The discussion phase
• The documentation phase

At the very beginning of the heuristic evaluation process the preparation phase takes place where a meeting is conducted to plan the process ahead. This meeting does not have to take place with all participants but the evaluation has to be prepared so that the most important heuristics that are going to be used are decided on. It is also important to know which application scenarios there are and which tasks there are to be carried out within these scenarios. The individual tasks must be formulated and defined.

After the preparation phase comes the evaluation phase. The evaluation is carried out by individual experts using the documents made available. The evaluators can be groups of the design or development team but also individuals.

If there is more than one evaluator, all the evaluators meet for the discussion phase after of the evaluation phase. The aim here is to compare the findings and problems that have been found, and to merge these into a list. The severity of the problems are then assessed and, in some cases, even initial solutions can be proposed in this phase.

At the very end, the documentation phase takes place in which the results are summarised in a corresponding results document.

Source: “09-1 HCI Evaluation Inspections and Quantifications” 33:39 – 35:48, Vbrick Rev, uploaded by Claudia Müller-Birn, 16 June 2020, https://fu-berlin.eu.vbrickrev.com/#/videos/db88c409-3b9b-46a0-a0d2-2c514542afda.