User flow evaluations: why heuristic evaluations are old news

I’m saying RIP to heuristic evaluations.

UX has progressed to the point where usability heuristics are widely ingrained into our collective practice. Nowadays, we factor these principles into our solutions with much less conscious effort. The traditional heuristic evaluation often no longer leads to the same level of dramatic, business-changing insights.

As UX practitioners, we have leveled-up. But we still strive to capture a new breed of dramatic, business-changing insights. So what is today’s equivalent to heuristic evaluations?

User flow evaluations

User flow evaluations take the principles of heuristic evaluation and apply them within a greater system: a user flow. Remember, like larger scale UX audits, the point of user flow evaluations is to uncover opportunities, not to come up with solutions.

What is a user flow?

A user flow is a pathway of steps a user takes to reach a specific goal. User flows can range from simple to complex and can be nested within bigger flows. User flows are often associated with the planning phase of feature building (and evaluating user flows in this phase is important). But once implemented in a live product, user flows are a living framework through which users achieve their goals.

These “living” user flows are the smallest meaningful unit to holistically evaluate whether or not we are serving our users.

Preparing for your user flow evaluation

The first major evolution from a traditional heuristic evaluation is establishing context. We’re not jumping in at face value anymore, we’re connecting the dots within a system. In this case, the system is the flow and we need to know where it takes place and why.

The context of the user flow needs to be well understood to maximize the relevancy of your evaluation. The foundation of good context is documentation of the user flow.