While establishing Heuristics for usability testing,do you advise using your own heuristics or pre defined ones

Question

I am conducting a usability study of medical content delivery systems and I was planning to use some heuristics present in a CHI paper for my Heuristic evaluation.However since the area of focus is slightly different from the paper,I am not sure if all the heuristics are applicable and whether I should use them as a guideline.

How would you handle such a situation,would you create your own heuristics or use an existing one and adapt it to suit your process ?

Thanks

Answer 1

A good heuristic evaluation is always tailored for a specific project needs. Use the paper as a start point. Learn the heuristics from it. Adapt the heuristics as much as needed to your domain/project. You also should take into account other classic heuristic evaluation templates, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic_evaluation#Nielsen.27s_heuristics.

Answer 2

You would be wise to use some sort of existing heuristics, such as the paper you are planning to use, then append your own specific rules/guidelines to it.

You'll notice I did not say 'modify'.