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Develo** and extending usability heuristics evaluation for user interface design via AHP

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Abstract

Although Nielsen’s heuristics are the most renowned usability heuristics, there is still vagueness and a lack of clarity which can be improved upon through modification or extension. Thus, Nielsen’s ten heuristics and the four criteria of the Usefulness, Satisfaction, and Ease of USE Questionnaire were merged and modified to form the 14 main heuristics of the proposed usability heuristic. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) analysis of the USE Questionnaire enabled the study to identify the top three questions per criteria. These were converted into sub-heuristics along with the tips provided via Nielsen’s updated heuristics (2020), forming a total of 42 sub-heuristics. After the sub-heuristics were established, the research conducted AHP pairwise comparisons of the main heuristics to extract priority based rankings that will guide evaluators regarding which heuristics require more attention. The results validate the purpose of this usability heuristic evaluation, since the experts identified more problems than they did with Nielsen’s heuristics proving a higher level of effectiveness.

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Correspondence to Mohamed Benaida.

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Benaida, M. Develo** and extending usability heuristics evaluation for user interface design via AHP. Soft Comput 27, 9693–9707 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00500-022-07803-4

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