University of Heuristics: an undergraduate thesis turns HCI teaching into a serious game
Cauê Mateus Oliveira and Lucas Midlhey Cardoso Naves defended at FCTE/UnB an undergraduate thesis turning the study of Nielsen’s heuristics into a game — the University of Heuristics.
Brasília, June 9, 2022
Nielsen’s ten heuristics are the alphabet of usability evaluation. And precisely because of that, they tend to enter students’ minds as rote memorization — without the concepts consolidating into an actual ability to look at an interface and spot what is wrong. This academic habit is what Cauê Mateus Oliveira and Lucas Midlhey Cardoso Naves respond to with an educational game, defended in June 2022 at FCTE/UnB under the advising of Prof. Fabiana Freitas Mendes .
The University of Heuristics places the player in scenarios where they must identify concrete violations in fictional interfaces — with reinforcement learning through immediate feedback. It is the difference between reading about “consistency and standards” and seeing that consistency fail tangibly, with all the consequences that brings to the user represented in the game.
By pairing Gamification with software quality , the thesis contributes to the repertoire of instructional resources available for HCI courses — today almost always run with texts, some exercises, and little opportunity for guided practice.
The full text — written in Portuguese — is available at the UnB Undergraduate Theses Digital Library.
About CEDIS: The Center for Studies, Development, and Innovation in Software (CEDIS), linked to the University of Brasília, researches and develops innovative software solutions.