Psychology & Cognition
10 Usability Heuristics
Maintained by Nielsen Norman Group
Jakob Nielsen’s ten general principles for interaction design - the most widely used framework for expert usability review.
Why it matters
Heuristic evaluation is the fastest credible audit method available. Ten principles, two evaluators, and half a day will surface most of what a usability test would find.
Key principles
- Visibility of system status - always keep users informed through timely feedback.
- Match between system and the real world - speak the user’s language, not internal jargon.
- User control and freedom - provide a clearly marked emergency exit, undo, and redo.
- Consistency and standards - follow platform and industry convention.
- Error prevention - eliminate error-prone conditions before relying on error messages.
- Recognition rather than recall - make options visible instead of memorable.
- Flexibility and efficiency of use - accelerators for experts, safe defaults for novices.
- Aesthetic and minimalist design - every extra unit of information competes with the relevant units.
- Help users recognise, diagnose, and recover from errors - plain language, precise cause, constructive fix.
- Help and documentation - searchable, task-focused, and concrete.
Resources
Foundations, principles, tutorials, community Figma files, icon sets, and templates.