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What are the best tools and methods for conducting a heuristic evaluation of your competitors' IA?

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If you want to create a user-friendly and intuitive website or app, you need to understand how your competitors organize and present their content. This is called information architecture (IA), and it affects how users find, understand, and use your information. In this article, you will learn how to conduct a competitive analysis for IA in the context of UX research, using a method called heuristic evaluation.

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Mohammad rajabi soheyli

UX Designer | User Interface Design, User Experience (UX)

1 What is heuristic evaluation?

Heuristic evaluation is a technique that involves evaluating a website or app against a set of usability principles or heuristics. These heuristics are based on best practices and research findings, and they help you identify potential problems and opportunities for improvement. You can use heuristic evaluation to compare your own IA with your competitors', or to evaluate a single competitor as a benchmark.

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Mohammad rajabi soheyli

UX Designer | User Interface Design, User Experience (UX)
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The heuristics are as follows: 1. Visibility of system status 2. Match between system and the real world 3. User control and freedom 4. Consistency and standards 5. Error prevention 6. Recognition rather than recall 7. Flexibility and efficiency of use 8. Aesthetic and minimalist design 9. Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors 10. Help and documentation But you need to know that you cannot answer these questions as an effective expert just by reading. You need practical experience to distinguish right from wrong. You must know the standards. Understand the meaning of design. Have enough technical vision to be able to answer these topics correctly.

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Ahmed Hussein

UX/UI Lead @Ejada | Product Design Mentor & Grader @Springboard | Instructor @ITI | Career Coach
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Heuristic evaluation involves having a small set of evaluators examine the interface and judge its compliance with recognized usability principles (the ‘heuristics’). — Jakob Nielsen

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2 How to choose competitors for IA analysis?

Before you start the heuristic evaluation, you need to select the competitors that you want to analyze. You can use criteria such as similarity, popularity, innovation, and inspiration to choose them. For instance, you may select competitors that offer similar products or services, have a large market share, have a unique approach to IA, or have an IA that you admire. To help with your selection process, you can use tools like Google Trends, SimilarWeb, or Alexa to find and compare competitors based on these criteria.

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Ahmed Hussein

UX/UI Lead @Ejada | Product Design Mentor & Grader @Springboard | Instructor @ITI | Career Coach
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Picking your rivals for IA analysis: Same stuff, same fans: Analyze products like yours for a head-to-head comparison. Big shots and rising stars: Learn from industry leaders and see what up-and-comers are doing. Creative minds: Check out innovative IA to spark your own ideas or find flaws in yours. IA you love or hate: Learn from the best or see what not to do. Remember: Choose rivals based on what you want to learn and how much time you have.

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3 How to prepare for heuristic evaluation?

Once you have chosen the competitors, you need to prepare for the heuristic evaluation. This requires a list of heuristics, such as Nielsen's 10 Heuristics or your own based on goals and context, a scoring system for rating the IA, and a template or spreadsheet to record and organize your findings. Heuristics for IA could include clarity and consistency across the website or app, support for user tasks and goals, matching user mental models and expectations, appropriate feedback and guidance, and easy navigation and search. The scoring system could be a simple scale of 1 to 5 or a more detailed one of 0 to 4. The template or spreadsheet should include columns for competitor name, heuristic name, score, comments, and suggestions.

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Ahmed Hussein

UX/UI Lead @Ejada | Product Design Mentor & Grader @Springboard | Instructor @ITI | Career Coach
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Set the stage: Define: What's under the microscope (website, app feature)? What are you hoping to learn? Brush up: Understand the chosen heuristics inside-out. Know your users: Dive deeper into their needs and expectations. Recruit and equip: Gather evaluators: Diverse skills, representing your target users. Train them up: Heuristics, interface, and evaluation process. Provide materials: Clear instructions, accessible interface, documentation tools. Bonus: Pilot test with a small group to fine-tune the process. Encourage evaluators to think aloud for deeper insights. Debrief together to prioritize improvement areas. Nail the prep, reap the evaluation rewards!

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4 How to conduct heuristic evaluation?

Now that you are ready, you can start the heuristic evaluation. The process involves visiting each competitor's website or app and exploring their IA. Try to perform common tasks, such as finding information, browsing categories, or making a purchase. Then, rate the IA of each competitor using the scoring system and provide comments and suggestions for improvement. Be sure to be objective and specific, and provide examples or screenshots if possible. Once you have completed this process for each competitor and heuristic, compare and analyze the results to identify patterns, strengths, weaknesses, gaps, and opportunities. This will help you identify the best practices and areas for improvement.

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5 How to use the results of heuristic evaluation?

Heuristic evaluation is an effective and practical method for conducting a competitive analysis of IA in the context of UX research. It can help you understand the current state of IA in your industry or niche, identify user needs and preferences, generate ideas and solutions, prioritize changes, and learn from the successes and failures of your competitors. Through heuristic evaluation, you can create an IA that is clear, consistent, supportive, and user-friendly, ultimately improving the user experience.

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6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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Mohammad rajabi soheyli

UX Designer | User Interface Design, User Experience (UX)
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Have a critical analysis and, of course, you should not be involved in possible biases and advance using the principles. You should also be very careful not to fall into perfectionism.

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What are the best tools and methods for conducting a heuristic evaluation of your competitors' IA?

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3

4

5

6

1 What is heuristic evaluation?

2 How to choose competitors for IA analysis?

3 How to prepare for heuristic evaluation?

4 How to conduct heuristic evaluation?

5 How to use the results of heuristic evaluation?

6 Here’s what else to consider

User Research

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What are the best tools and methods for conducting a heuristic evaluation of your competitors' IA?

1

2

3

4

5

6

1 What is heuristic evaluation?

2 How to choose competitors for IA analysis?

3 How to prepare for heuristic evaluation?

4 How to conduct heuristic evaluation?

5 How to use the results of heuristic evaluation?

6 Here’s what else to consider

User Research

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