Resources
UX Heuristics Compared
Side-by-side comparisons of the heuristic guidelines UX teams use most — Nielsen's heuristics, Dieter Rams' principles of good design, Shneiderman's golden rules, and more. Pick the one that fits your project.
Available heuristic guideline comparisons
Side-by-side comparison
Dieter Rams' 10 vs Nielsen's 10
Dieter Rams' 10 principles vs Nielsen's 10 usability heuristics: where they overlap, where they don't, and which to use for a UX audit. With Heurio.
Side-by-side comparison
Nielsen's 10 vs Shneiderman's 8
Nielsen's 10 heuristics vs Shneiderman's 8 golden rules: where they overlap, where they diverge, and which to use for a UX heuristic evaluation. With Heurio.
A heuristic-evaluation guideline is a short list of design rules a reviewer walks through against an interface. The four guidelines UX teams reach for most are Nielsen's 10 usability heuristics (1994), Dieter Rams' 10 principles of good design (1970s), Shneiderman's 8 golden rules of interface design (1986), and Don Norman's principles of design (1988). The comparisons above map them rule-by-rule so you can pick the guideline that matches what you're reviewing.
Which guideline should you reach for?
- When you'reAuditing software (web app, SaaS, mobile)Reach forNielsen's 10 usability heuristicsWhyEvery rule maps to a fixable interaction, so findings translate one-to-one into UI tickets.
- When you'reDesigning a new interactive systemReach forShneiderman's 8 golden rulesWhyWritten as design directives, not audit criteria — they guide decisions before screens exist.
- When you'reHardware, brand language, or design philosophyReach forDieter Rams' 10 principlesWhyHonesty, restraint, longevity, craft — values that hold up across decades.
- When you'reAffordances and mental modelsReach forDon Norman's principles of designWhyBest when the issue is conceptual — users misreading what an element does or means.
What is heuristic evaluation?
Heuristic evaluation is a usability-inspection method where a small group of reviewers checks an interface against a set of recognized usability principles — called heuristics. It surfaces the majority of UX problems quickly, without running a full user test, which makes it one of the cheapest and fastest ways to catch issues before a release.
In practice, reviewers walk through the product screen by screen, compare what they see to each rule in the chosen guideline, and log every violation with a severity rating. The output is a prioritized list of issues the team can act on.
When to use it
- Before a release— catch obvious UX and copy issues while there’s still time to fix them.
- Alongside usability testing— experts find what users miss; users find what experts miss.
- On a competitor— benchmark their flows against the same rubric you hold yourself to.
- During design review— turn subjective feedback into specific, rule-based observations.
How to pick a guideline
There isn’t one “correct” set of heuristics — each was written to answer a slightly different question. Nielsen’s 10 are the default for general product UX. Shneiderman’s 8 focus on interface consistency and predictability. Dieter Rams’ principles lean toward product design aesthetics. ISO 9241 is the formal, standards-body option when you need something auditable. Start with whichever fits the product you’re reviewing — you can always run a second pass with a different guideline later.
Running an evaluation in Heurio
Install the Chrome extension, open any live website, and switch to Comment View. Pick a guideline from the list below, then tag each comment you leave with the rule it violates and a severity. Share the result as a link, a Kanban board, or a PDF — no screenshots, no Loom, no “check page 3 of the doc.”
Want the full list of guidelines?
Each comparison cross-references the canonical guideline pages. Browse the entire heuristic guidelines library, including frameworks we have not paired up yet.
Browse all heuristic guidelines
