Feedback
01 / 10
Visibility of System Status
The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.
Familiarity
02 / 10
Match Between System and the Real World
Speak the user’s language. Use words, phrases, and concepts familiar to them, not system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions.
Reversibility
03 / 10
User Control and Freedom
Users often choose system functions by mistake and need a clearly marked “emergency exit” to leave the unwanted state — support undo and redo.
Predictability
04 / 10
Consistency and Standards
Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform and industry conventions.
Guard rails
05 / 10
Error Prevention
Better than good error messages is a careful design that prevents the problem from occurring in the first place — guard rails over guides.
Memory load
06 / 10
Recognition Rather Than Recall
Minimize memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. Users should not have to remember information from one part of the interface to another.
Accelerators
07 / 10
Flexibility and Efficiency of Use
Accelerators — unseen by novices — may speed up interaction for experts so the system serves both. Let users tailor frequent actions.
Signal-to-noise
08 / 10
Aesthetic and Minimalist Design
Interfaces should not contain information that is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information competes with the relevant units and diminishes their visibility.
Plain language
09 / 10
Help Recognize, Diagnose and Recover
Error messages should be expressed in plain language, precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution. Tell the user what’s wrong and how to fix it.
Just-in-time
10 / 10
Help and Documentation
Even though it’s better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help. Any such information should be easy to search and focused on the user’s task.
✦
Heuristics in the Age of AI
The ten heuristics still hold — but “system status,” “user control,” and “error prevention” take on new meaning when the system is a probabilistic model.
✦ AI Era
Show the Model Thinking
Visibility of system status now means streaming tokens, a thinking shimmer, and tool-call progress. Ten silent seconds during generation reads as a frozen, broken app.
✦ AI Era
Stop & Regenerate
User control and freedom, AI edition: a stop button mid-stream and a regenerate after. The model’s first answer is a draft, never a dead end.