Heuristic evaluation of groupware based on the mechanics of collaboration

Abstract

Despite the increasing availability of groupware, most systems are awkward and not widely used. While there are many reasons for this, a significant problem is that groupware is difficult to evaluate. In particular, there are no discount usability evaluation methodologies that can discover problems specific to teamwork. In this paper, we describe how we adapted Nielsen’s heuristic evaluation methodology, designed originally for single user applications, to help inspectors rapidly, cheaply effectively identify usability problems within groupware systems. Specifically, we take the ‘mechanics of collaboration’ framework and restate it as heuristics for the purposes of discovering problems in shared visual work surfaces for distance-separated groups.