Nielsen's Heuristics

An issue with using case studies to determine how to advise AmCham Romania with topics regarding membership data organization and website design was that our advice may have been perceived to be very subjective, thus resulting in answers that are neither right nor wrong. This is why we met with a subject matter expert on website design who recommended using Nielsen’s Heuristics. These heuristics are as followed

• Visibility of System Status

• Match Between System & Real World

• User Control & Freedom

• Consistency & Standards

• Error Prevention

• Recognition Rather Than Recall

• Flexibility & Efficiency of Use

• Aesthetic & Minimalistic Design

• Help User Recognize, Diagnose, & Recover from Errors

• Help & Documentation

By using Nielsen’s heuristics, we created a list of essential features and characteristics that contribute to an effective website design (Nielsen, n.d). This method was carried out by having each member of the project team individually analyze all six websites, that of AmCham Romania and those of the other five AmChams. As each member took notes on the various heuristics (see the Additional Information tab for the notes), they also ranked each heuristic on a scale of one to five, with one being poor and needing major improvements and five being excellent and needing no, or very minor, improvements. These rankings were then averaged among the four team members to determine where each AmCham website ranks on this scale. This helped us determine how AmCham Romania’s website compares to the others.