A methodology for domain and culture-oriented heuristics creation and validation

Culture fit is an essential consideration while designing websites in this technologically evolving era, yet it is too often ignored in current usability evaluation methods. The heuristic evaluation is one such method, in which, generally, experts use a set of heuristics as a guide. These heuristics are well designed to pinpoint the general usability design faults; however, they limit identifying potential usability problems for specific domains and cultures. This article presents a formal methodology with a sequence of steps of how domain and culture-specific heuristics can be designed. This methodology is validated and applied in the context of websites for universities in Pakistan.