The Sensemaker’s Guide to Heuristics

Picture this: You’re standing in front of a mess that needs making sense of. Maybe it’s a product that’s grown too complex, a process that’s gotten unwieldy, or a team that’s lost its way. You know something needs to change, but where do you even start?

Enter heuristics – your trusty flashlight in the dark. Not quite rules (too rigid), not quite guidelines (too vague), but something wonderfully in-between. They’re the “if you remember nothing else, remember this” principles that help you tackle big problems without losing your mind.

I created my own set of information architecture heuristics back in 2011, sitting in a kitchen that smelled like blueberry pie. I was trying to figure out how to evaluate digital experiences in a way that actually made sense to everyone involved – not just the specialists. What started as a way to make seemingly subjective decisions more systematic turned into something bigger: a set of practical principles that have helped countless teams make better choices, faster in the form of my popular IA Heuristics Poster and Workbook.

Here’s the thing about heuristics – they’re not about being perfect. They’re about being good enough to move forward. Think of them as well-worn paths through a dense forest. Sure, there might be other ways through, but these paths? They’ll help you avoid the worst of the thorns.

Here’s another thing I have learned about heuristics – some people are allergic to the word, but all of us agree our expertise is built on our heuristic knowledge of the contexts, and mediums in which we work. I think it is incredibly ironic that a word that means “rule of thumb” would be seen as “too complex or academic” just by the sound. But humans, we are fickle. We don’t like 10 dollar words like those as a group, almost as a rule.

So let’s dig into this 10 dollar word and see if we can find some priceless wisdom.

This article covers:

  • What are Heuristics?
  • Reasons to use Heuristics
  • Common Use Cases for Heuristics
  • Types of Heuristics
  • Approaches to Heuristics
  • Tips to Getting Started with Heuristics
  • Hot Takes about Heuristics
  • Frequently Asked Questions about Heuristics

What are Heuristics?

Heuristics are guiding principles that help us navigate complexity without getting lost in the details. Heuristics are much more than just evaluation criteria – they’re thinking tools that help us make better decisions faster.

Before we get into the power of heuristics, let’s talk about where standards fit in. Standards like ISO 9241 for interaction design or WCAG 2 for accessibility provide specific requirements and measurements. They tell us exactly what must be done to be compliant. Heuristics, on the other hand, are more flexible principles that help us think through problems and make better decisions. Think of standards as the laws regarding the road, while heuristics are more like principles of good driving.

In sensemaking work, we use both: standards to ensure we meet necessary requirements, and heuristics to help us make good choices in the spaces between those requirements. With that distinction in mind, let’s look at the reasons why you might turn to heuristics.

Reasons to Use Heuristics

Why do we need these principles? Because making sense of complex situations is hard, and we need reliable ways to:

Cut Through Complexity

Complex problems can paralyze teams with too many options and unclear priorities. Heuristics give us a systematic way to break down big challenges without getting lost in the details. They help us focus on what matters most while keeping the bigger picture in view.

Make Consistent Decisions

Good decisions shouldn’t depend on who happened to be in the room that day. Heuristics provide teams with shared criteria for judgment, leading to more consistent choices across projects and over time. I’ve watched teams move from circular debates to productive discussions just by having clear principles to guide them.

Build Shared Understanding

When everyone on a team knows what “clear” or “useful” means in their context, collaboration gets easier. Heuristics create a common language for quality that transcends individual preferences and helps teams align on what “good” looks like.

Create Frameworks for Critique

Critique sessions without structure can quickly devolve into opinion battles. Heuristics provide a framework for giving and receiving feedback that focuses on substance rather than style. They help turn “I don’t like it” into specific, actionable feedback.

Avoid Common Pitfalls

Why stumble into the same holes others have already discovered? Heuristics capture hard-won wisdom in an actionable format. They’re like having a cheat sheet of lessons learned by those who’ve already walked the path you’re on.

The beauty of heuristics is that they give us just enough structure to move forward without becoming rigid rules that stifle creativity or innovation.

Common Use Cases for Heuristics

In my years of teaching and practicing, I’ve seen heuristics used effectively in:

Evaluating Existing Systems

When facing a mess, teams often rush to fix things without truly understanding what’s broken. Heuristic evaluation helps identify actual problems versus surface-level symptoms. I’ve seen teams save months of work by taking this structured approach to assessment.

Planning New Initiatives

Starting a new project without principles is like setting sail without a compass. Heuristics help teams chart a course that avoids known pitfalls while keeping the end goal in sight. They turn overwhelming projects into manageable steps with clear success criteria.

Training Team Members

Every team develops its own way of working, but quality should be consistent. Using heuristics in training helps teams develop shared standards without squashing individual creativity. It’s about teaching principles that guide decisions, not rigid rules that limit options.

Facilitating Productive Critiques

Structure transforms critique sessions from subjective opinion-sharing into productive discussions. When teams evaluate work against clear principles, they can focus on how well something meets established criteria rather than personal preferences.

Building Shared Vocabulary

Clear communication requires shared understanding. When teams agree on what terms like “accessible” or “consistent” mean in their context, they spend less time debating semantics and more time solving problems. I’ve watched teams cut meeting times in half just by getting this alignment.

Creating Measurement Frameworks

You can’t improve what you can’t measure, and you can’t measure without clear criteria. Heuristics provide specific qualities to evaluate, making it easier to track progress and demonstrate value. They help answer the critical question: “How do we know if this is working?”

Types of Heuristics

From my experience working with heuristics across different contexts and organizations, I’ve found it useful to think about them clustering into three main categories. This isn’t an established framework, but rather a practical way of organizing principles that often emerge in sensemaking work.

Structural Heuristics

Structural heuristics guide how we organize and connect information, systems, and processes. They help us evaluate whether the bones of what we’re building make sense and will support the weight of what we’re trying to achieve. When called in to help make sense of a messy taxonomy, we might look for patterns in how things are grouped and arranged. Are similar things being called different names across departments? Are important relationships being obscured by how things are organized? Structural heuristics help us spot these issues and suggest better ways to organize information so relationships become clear and navigation becomes intuitive.

Structural Principles tend to focus on:

  • Organization and grouping
  • Navigation and findability
  • Consistency and patterns
  • Visual/spatial relationships

Experiential Heuristics

Experiential heuristics address how people interact with and feel about what we create. When working on a project to improve internal documentation, we don’t just look at whether information exists – we examine how people find and use it in their daily work. Are they avoiding certain tools because they’re frustrating? Are they creating workarounds because the official process is too cumbersome? Experiential heuristics help us identify where friction points exist and how to reduce them, making sure solutions work in reality, not just on paper.

Experiential Principles tend to focus on:

  • User feelings and responses
  • Ease of understanding
  • Satisfaction and delight
  • Accessibility and usability

Procedural Heuristics

Procedural heuristics guide how work gets done and decisions get made. When helping teams develop better ways of working, we can look at how decisions flow through an organization. Where do things get stuck? Why do some processes work smoothly while others constantly hit snags? One team I worked with had a perfectly logical approval process that nonetheless created constant bottlenecks. Procedural heuristics helped us identify that the issue wasn’t the process itself, but how it handled exceptions and special cases. This led to a more flexible system that worked better in practice.

Procedural Principles tend to focus on:

  • Control and recovery
  • Error handling
  • Efficiency and automation
  • System behavior management

We often need to employ heuristics from each of the above three types in order to create a well-rounded list that is suitable to our purpose. It is important to consider whether you have enough coverage in each type when creating your own list of heuristics.

Approaches to Heuristics

The key to using heuristics effectively is finding the right balance between rigor and flexibility. Here’s how I recommend you approach it:

Start with a Review of Established Heuristic Frameworks

I think perhaps the single most important thing I can point out is that while many lists of heuristics exist and are of great usefulness, often creating your own unique list is a better investment than choosing an established one and using it wholesale. That said, while not likely to serve ALL your needs, bringing in principles from many sources is the next right step for many heuristic endeavors.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of established frameworks touching on sensemaking heuristics:

… and since I am an information nerd to my core, and made a spreadsheet for my own purposes while noodling on this piece, here is a full listing of all of the relevant principles from all of aforementioned frameworks, neatly organized by type, and sortable by year: A historical menu of heuristic gold. If your pulse just quickened, you’re welcome, you absolute nerd.

Customize for Your Needs

Now that you have calmed yourself with the knowledge that all established frameworks were made by smart folks just like you, we can move into the real work of establishing a custom list of heuristics that are specific to your needs.

Here are the top three lessons I have learned in helping teams establish heuristic lists for various purposes.

Build on or integrate principles that already exist in your organizational culture

Many organizations already have principles that they align to from a cultural or even ethical standpoint. Laddering to or repurposing the framing for your set can be effective in some cultures.

At Netflix, their widely-known cultural value of ‘Context over Control’ became a foundation for their design system principles. Instead of creating new rules about component flexibility, they built on this existing principle: ‘Components should provide context for proper use rather than rigid controls that limit innovation.’

Modify language to match your culture

There are words that smell right, and some that smell wrong in the context of an organizational culture. Pay special attention to that. If for example your organization is allergic to experts, or academics, pay special attention to even use of a word like “heuristic” — I can promise the results are just as sweet by any other name 😉

At a company that was full of artisans, we changed ‘Information Architecture Heuristics’ to ‘Navigation Ground Rules.’ Instead of saying ‘Maintain clear taxonomic relationships,’ we wrote ‘Put things where they make sense to the people who make things.’ Usage of the principles jumped dramatically after this simple language shift.

Add specific examples relevant to your work

The best way to get across a heuristic is to use an example of it being violated. Aim for an example that is specifically relevant to your work.

When working on one particular system, we had the principle ‘Always show system status.’ What made it real: showing the team a payment screen that only displayed ‘Processing…’ with no indication if it was stuck or working. That example clicked instantly as we have all experienced the sense of ‘hanging’ without a status.

Test and Refine

Once you have a list you think might be helpful, its time to see if you are right. As is true with any other information architecture, the only way to know if it works is to ask users if it makes sense for their purposes.

Apply heuristics in real situations

The only way to know if your heuristics work is to use them on actual projects. Start small with a single project or problem rather than rolling them out across your entire organization at once. Pick a project where the stakes aren’t too high but the work is complex enough to test your principles thoroughly.

Document how your team uses the heuristics during the project. Note which ones come up often and which ones rarely get mentioned. Pay attention to moments when someone says “this doesn’t seem to fit our situation” – these are gold for refining your list.

Gather feedback from users

Don’t just ask your team what they think of the heuristics – look at how the end results are received by actual users. Set up simple ways to collect feedback that directly relates to your principles. For example, if one of your heuristics is about clarity, ask users specific questions about whether information was easy to understand.

You might even eventually create a simple scoring system where users can rate how well your product meets each principle.

Iterate based on results

After using your heuristics and gathering feedback, be ready to make changes. This might mean:

  • Removing principles that don’t actually help your specific work
  • Adding new ones that address problems you keep running into
  • Rewording principles to make them clearer
  • Combining overlapping ideas into stronger single principles
  • Creating better examples that show real violations from your own work

Remember that the point of heuristics is to make work better and easier, not to create more rules to follow. If your list grows beyond 10-12 items, it probably needs trimming. The best heuristics are the ones people actually remember and use without having to look them up.

Set a regular schedule to review and update your principles, maybe every six months or after major projects. This keeps them fresh and relevant to your current challenges rather than becoming outdated rules that everyone ignores.

Tips for Getting Started with Heuristics

I know creating heuristics can feel overwhelming, so here’s how to begin without losing your mind:

Step 1: Begin with a small set of principles (5-7 maximum)

Start with just the most important ideas instead of trying to cover everything. When teams try to create comprehensive lists, they end up with principles nobody remembers. The human brain can only juggle so many things at once, so respect that limit. I’ve seen teams spend weeks crafting 25 perfect principles that nobody ever uses. In contrast, teams with 5 to 10 solid principles actually apply them daily because they can recall them without checking a document. If you can’t explain your complete set of principles in a casual 5-minute conversation, they’re too complicated.

Step 2: Write them in clear, actionable language

Skip the fancy words and academic language. When I worked with one team, they changed “Maintain consistent visual hierarchy” to “Make important stuff stand out.” Usage skyrocketed because everyone immediately understood what it meant. The best principles use words your team already uses in everyday conversations. Make each principle something people can actually do, not just abstract concepts they need to interpret. Avoid vague terms like “optimal” or “quality” that mean different things to different people.

Step 3: Include examples of both good and bad applications

Show real examples from your own work whenever possible. Nothing makes a principle click like seeing it done right and wrong with familiar material. One product team I worked with took screenshots of their own interface showing both good and bad implementations of each principle. They paired each principle with at least one clear violation that made people say, “Oh, I see what you mean now.” Generic examples rarely stick, but team-specific ones become part of your shared language. Make your examples specific enough that people can immediately see how they apply to their daily work.

Step 4: Create simple tools for evaluation

Make a basic checklist people can use during reviews without needing a training session to understand it. A design team I know created a simple 1-5 scale for rating how well their work met each principle, making feedback concrete instead of vague. Build simple yes/no questions that force clear decisions rather than allowing endless debates about interpretation. The best evaluation tools feel less like homework and more like helpful guides.

Step 5: Practice applying them regularly

Schedule short review sessions where the team applies principles together to build a shared understanding. Start using them in real projects right away rather than treating them as theoretical concepts. A content team I worked with added a “heuristic check” step to their existing workflow, normalizing principle use as just part of the job. Have team members take turns leading principle reviews to build ownership across the group. Regular practice turns principles from abstract ideas into practical tools everyone knows how to use.

Step 6: Revise based on real use

Plan to update your principles after 3 months of actual use. The first version will never be perfect, and that’s okay. Track which principles get referenced most often and which ones nobody ever mentions. Replace academic language with the actual words you hear your team using when they discuss the principles. Be willing to throw out principles that sound good in a meeting but don’t help in practice. One engineering team I advised completely rewrote their principles after six months because they realized what sounded good in theory wasn’t what they actually needed in practice.

Remember: Good heuristics make work easier, not harder. If your principles aren’t helping your team solve real problems faster, they need to change – no matter how smart they sound.

Heuristic Hot Takes

After years of working with heuristics, here are some things I’ve learned:

Perfect heuristics don’t exist – aim for useful instead

The search for perfect principles is a trap that delays real progress. I’ve seen teams spend months debating exact wording while their actual work problems remained unsolved. Your first version will have flaws, and that’s fine. A “good enough” set of principles that people actually use will outperform a theoretically perfect set that remains stuck in documentation. Start with principles that address your most pressing problems, knowing you’ll improve them as you go.

The best heuristics evolve with use

Principles should change as your work and team change. The product team at a financial company I worked with reviews their principles quarterly, removing ones that no longer fit their challenges and adding new ones based on recurring problems. Their principles shifted dramatically when they moved from desktop to mobile-first design. Static principles grow stale and irrelevant. Living principles that adapt based on real experience maintain their power to guide decisions over time.

Context matters more than comprehensiveness

Different projects need different approaches to the same principles. A design system team created three versions of their evaluation process: one for quick checks, one for formal reviews, and one for teaching new hires. Trying to create a single comprehensive framework that covers every possible scenario produces something too complex to use regularly. Simple, context-specific guidelines that match how your team actually works will see far more use than an exhaustive but unwieldy system.

Simple language beats technical terminology

When a marketing team changed their principle from “Ensure semantic consistency across touch points” to “Use the same words for the same things,” compliance increased almost overnight. Nobody needed an explanation of the second version. The moment you need to define terms within your principles, you’ve already lost most of your audience. Write as if you’re explaining to a smart friend in a completely different field. If your principles sound like they belong in an academic journal, rewrite them until they sound like something you’d say in a casual conversation.

Examples make principles real

A product team struggled with their “Be consistent” principle until they created a wall of screenshots showing five different button styles from their own app labeled “This is what inconsistency looks like.” Suddenly everyone understood. Concrete examples transform vague concepts into clear decisions. The best examples come from your own work, showing real violations that people recognize. When principles include clear examples of both good and bad applications, agreement about what “good” looks like increases dramatically.

Regular use builds muscle memory

A development team made a game of spotting principle violations during their daily standups, turning application into a habit rather than an occasional chore. Within weeks, team members were automatically thinking in terms of their principles without conscious effort. Principles reviewed once a quarter quickly fade from memory, while those applied daily become second nature. Build regular checkpoints into your existing workflow where principles are explicitly referenced, and rotate responsibility for leading these reviews to build ownership across the entire team.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are three of the top questions I get when teaching heurisitics.

Q: How many heuristic principles should we have? A: Start with fewer than 10. You can always add more later, but too many at once becomes overwhelming. Most people can only remember and apply a handful of rules at a time. Beginning with 3-5 core heuristics often works best – this gives your team enough guidance without causing decision paralysis. As your team gains experience, you might find natural opportunities to add more specific guidelines.

Q: Should we create our own heuristic list or use existing ones? A: Start with existing frameworks and modify them for your needs. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Many organizations and experts have already tested and refined helpful heuristics. Look at established models in your field, borrow what works, and then adjust them to fit your specific context and challenges. This saves time and gives you a stronger starting point than creating rules from scratch.

Q: How often should we review and update our heuristics? A: Review them whenever they stop being useful. If you find yourself regularly making exceptions, it’s time for an update. Watch for signs like team members frequently bypassing the guidelines, confusion about how to apply them, or decisions that followed the heuristics but led to poor outcomes. A formal review every 3-6 months might be helpful, but the best approach is to maintain ongoing awareness of how well your heuristics are serving their purpose.

Looking Forward

Let’s bring it all together. Heuristics aren’t just fancy rules or abstract concepts – they’re practical thinking tools that help us tackle complex problems. They give us just enough guidance without boxing us in.

The best heuristics are the ones your team actually remembers and uses. Start small with 5-7 principles written in plain language everyone understands. Include real examples from your own work that show both good and bad applications. Create simple tools to help people apply these principles regularly, and be ready to change them based on what you learn. Remember that heuristics should make your work easier, not harder. If your team is struggling to use them or forgetting them entirely, that’s a sign they need to be simpler or more relevant to your actual challenges.

Whether you’re organizing information, designing experiences, or improving team processes, good heuristics help you focus on what matters most. They won’t solve every problem for you, but they’ll help you find your way through the complexity without getting lost in the details. The goal isn’t perfection – it’s progress. With the right set of principles guiding your decisions, you’ll make better choices more consistently, communicate more clearly with your team, and create work that truly makes sense.

If you want to learn more about my approach to heuristics, consider attending my workshop on March 21st from 12 PM to 2 PM ET. Heuristics in Action: Simple Checks for Better Designs — this workshop is free to premium members of the Sensemakers Club along with a new workshop each month — there are drop in tickets available. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for our focus area in April is Stakeholders.