As stated before, heuristics are general rule of thumbs. When specifying this heuristic to the healthcare domain and, specifically, to the target-group of elderly populations, this heuristic should be avoided: allowing for exits and support undo-buttons can generate much confusion with the end-users. If there are too many options available, they want to try them all. Therefore, you should design an application where the user cannot make mistakes or you include preventative measures such as warning messages. This is something you only find out by testing the product, which is why you should always involve your end-users throughout the development phase of your application.

Consistency is extremely important for users: it allows them to quickly understand how an application works and remember it in the future. Consistency can be achieved in many different ways: a consistency in design and color usage, using icons that look and feel similar in design, and repeating labels and titles across screens for identical functions. Be creative in your design, but be consistent in your creativity.

As stated, it is better to prevent than to cure. Therefore, to implement this heuristic, you could warn users when they are potentially going to make an error. Also, you could implement case-blind input fields when upper/lower case letters are irrelevant and provide feedback on what type of data needs to be entered (e.g. a date in a specific format or a limit of characters that can be entered). By helping users enter data and interact with the system, you are preventing them from making mistakes. This can positively influence the user experience.

The focus of this heuristic is that users should not have to remember information from one screen to another: important information should be shown to them on their current screen. Moreover, it could help to leave a breadcrumb trail of where they are in the application (e.g. which menu item have they selected). When creating menus, ensure the titles are short and concise and try to implement that the first word of the title is the most important one.

To incorporate this heuristic, you could implement a search functionality so users can quickly find what they are looking for. This search function could also offer advanced options to help advanced users quickly find what they are looking for. Also, you could differentiate between types of users, such as an expert mode and a beginner mode. Another way to achieve this heuristic is by allowing the user to add or pin actions or items so they can easily access it. Adaptation to the user will affect the user experience in a very positive way.

Aesthetic and minimalistic design tries to limit “over-design.” Therefore, you should avoid including icons that are excessively detailed and images or animations that do not add any value. A lot of applications also struggle with providing too much information, making screens look crowded to the user: avoid this by only providing the information necessary for that specific screen and minimise the amount of text.

Unfortunately, not all errors can be avoided in applications. Therefore, it is important to include error messages that can help users recover from their mistakes. Here, errors should be indicated and help should be offered to the user. For example, if they have entered an invalid mail address, an error message should indicate which field had incorrect data (recognise error), that mail addresses need to contain an “@“ sign (e.g. please enter a mail address with the following structure: janedoe@example.com, diagnose error) and allow the user to correct their mistakes (recover from error). By providing more details on where the error was made and how they can correct it, users can more easily interact with systems.

Including a help function or page within your application could be useful: it could provide users with instructions on how certain functionalities work. Moreover, additional information could be provided on sections of the application. The goal is that applications are intuitive and easy to use, but it never hurts to have some extra tools integrated that could help the user when interacting with the system. The help information should be very easy to find and easy to search through. If possible, the help information should be accessed while working on a task and the user should be able to switch between both screens without losing any information.