Nine Principles for Actable Systems Design

Heuristic evaluation relies fundamentally on predefined criteria to direct attention to important aspects of the inspected phenomenon, such as Jacob Nielsen’s ten usability heuristics. In this paper we present nine complementary principles explicitly focused on evaluation of IT-systems as tools for business action and communication. The principles are derived from the concept of actability, which embodies this view, and from an actability interpretation of the set of ten significant features of the casual face-to-face conversation suggested by Herbert H Clark.