Usability Heuristics Quiz: Diagnose These 12 UI Fails

12 interfaces that made users suffer. Can you name which of Nielsen's 10 usability heuristics each one breaks? Plain-English answers after every question — no sign-up.

0 / 12 answered

You hit "Upload" on a 2 GB video. The button doesn't change, no spinner, no progress bar — for three minutes you wonder if anything is happening. Which heuristic is broken?

A banking app's transfer screen says "Initiate ACH origination to external counterparty." Your mom just wants to send you money. Which heuristic?

You accidentally tap "Archive all." No undo, no way back — support says the only fix is restoring items one by one. Which heuristic?

In one app, deleting is "Remove" on this screen, "Discard" on that one, and an unlabeled trash icon on a third. Users hesitate every single time. Which heuristic?

A flight-booking form happily lets you pick a return date earlier than the departure date, then throws an error only after you hit Submit. Which principle did it ignore?

After a flat-design refresh, the "Save" button looks exactly like plain text. It still works — users just don't realize they can click it. In Don Norman's terms, what did the redesign remove?

A discount code flashes by on step 3 of checkout — and step 5 asks you to type it in from memory. Which heuristic?

A support agent files 200 tickets a day, and every single one takes six clicks through the same menus. No shortcuts, no bulk actions. Which heuristic?

A dashboard greets you with 40 widgets, 6 promo banners and every stat the database can produce. Users can't find the one number they came for. Which heuristic?

Q10

A payment fails and the app shows: "Error 0x2F." Nothing else. Which heuristic?

Q11

A tax app buries its only instructions in a 90-page PDF with no search. Users just need the three steps for one form. Which heuristic?

Q12

Your team plans a heuristic evaluation. The PM says: "Let's save time — our most senior designer will review it alone." What does the NN/g playbook say?

Answer all 12 questions to see your result 👆

Nielsen's 10 heuristics + 2 Norman terms (cheat sheet)

1. Visibility of system status: Keep users informed about what's going on, with timely feedback.
2. Match between system and the real world: Speak the users' language, not internal jargon.
3. User control and freedom: A clearly marked emergency exit — undo, redo, cancel.
4. Consistency and standards: Same thing, same name; follow platform and industry conventions.
5. Error prevention: The best error message is the error that never happens.
6. Recognition rather than recall: Show options; don't make users remember things across screens.
7. Flexibility and efficiency of use: Accelerators for experts, invisible to novices.
8. Aesthetic and minimalist design: Every irrelevant element competes with the useful ones.
9. Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors: Plain language, precise problem, constructive fix.
10. Help and documentation: Ideally unneeded; when needed — searchable, task-focused, concrete steps.
Affordance: The action a thing makes possible — a relation, and not necessarily visible.
Signifier: The perceivable cue that tells users what's possible and how to do it.

Where do the 10 usability heuristics come from?

Heuristic evaluation was introduced by Jakob Nielsen and Rolf Molich in a 1990 CHI paper: have evaluators inspect an interface against a small set of general usability principles and flag every violation. In 1994, Nielsen ran a factor analysis of 249 real usability problems and distilled the principles with the strongest explanatory power into the 10 heuristics we use today — and as the Nielsen Norman Group points out, those 10 have stayed unchanged since 1994.

That longevity is by design. The heuristics are rules of thumb, not pixel specifications — they point a direction ('keep users informed', 'prevent errors') rather than prescribe a widget. That's also why they map so cleanly onto Don Norman's design principles: visibility and feedback, natural mapping, constraints and forcing functions, reversible actions.

Professionals apply them through a heuristic evaluation: 3–5 trained evaluators each inspect the product independently, then merge and cluster their findings. The independence matters — any single evaluator, no matter how senior, reliably misses a share of the problems; several in parallel cover far more ground.

This quiz covers all 10 heuristics by their official names, one real-world fail each, plus two bonus rounds: the evaluation process itself, and Norman's affordance-vs-signifier distinction — the term almost everyone in design uses slightly wrong.

FAQ

What are Nielsen's 10 usability heuristics?

Visibility of system status; match between system and the real world; user control and freedom; consistency and standards; error prevention; recognition rather than recall; flexibility and efficiency of use; aesthetic and minimalist design; help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors; help and documentation.

Who created the 10 usability heuristics?

Jakob Nielsen — the method comes from his 1990 CHI paper with Rolf Molich, and Nielsen refined the list to today's 10 in 1994, based on a factor analysis of 249 real usability problems.

Are the 10 heuristics outdated?

No. NN/g notes they've stayed unchanged since 1994 — they're broad rules of thumb about human behavior, not tied to any specific technology.

How many evaluators does a heuristic evaluation need?

3–5, each inspecting independently before merging findings. A single evaluator — however experienced — misses a chunk of the problems.

What's the difference between an affordance and a signifier?

An affordance is the possible action itself (a relation — it can exist unseen); a signifier is the perceivable cue that communicates it. Want a button to 'look clickable'? You need a signifier.