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Adaptation of Heuristic Evaluations for the Physical Environment

Previous work has investigated the need for domain specific heuristics. Nielsen’s ten heuristics offer a general list of principles, but those principles may not capture usability issues specific to a given interface. Studies have demonstrated methods to establish a domain specific heuristic set, but very little research has been conducted on interfaces in the physical environment, creating a gap in the state-of-the-art. The research described in this paper aims to address this gap by developing an environmental heuristic set; the heuristic set was developed specifically for the Houston light rail system, METRORail. Following development, the heuristic set was validated against Nielsen’s more general heuristics through several field studies. Results highlighted that there were significantly more usability issues identified when using the environment-based heuristics than the general heuristics. This suggests that domain specific heuristics provide a framework that allows evaluators to capture usability issues particular to the interface of the physical environment.