The finest way to grade a product's user experience or usability is by user testing it, which although consumes more resource produce the best results. User feedbacks are pricey and interpreting them is also time-consuming and not all user centered products have such freedom to these resources. At such cases Heuristic Evaluation of your product helps in minimizing the usability problems with a much lower consumption of your limited resources.
Studies also show how effective can these thumb rules actually be at discovering the usability issues. A team of four usability experts would be able to discover 77% of the problems during an evaluation process. Although it's important to remember the fact that such percentage of success is possible only when the evaluation is performed by the experts and decreases as per the evaluators expertise and experience.
The findings are listed based on their level of impact it would cause on the system's user experience (High, Medium, Low).
User should have the control to revert back their actions with the freedom to exit the system when they wish to, at all times.
Humans are bound to make errors, and the system should support the user in eliminating them.
User assistance must be provided by the system to reduce the user's memory load.
The system's must prove efficient for both the novice and experienced users. Accelerators/ Shortcut commands for the Experienced and obvious alternatives for the novice users.
The system must help the user in recovering from errors. Error messages should be constructed with empathy.
User should be provided with appropriate help documents both online and offline about the system. The documentation must deliver effective steps for the users to accomplish their goals.