Fundamental Usability Evaluation in Visualization: Integrating Nielsen’s Principles and the Analytic Hierarchy Process

In information visualization, rapidly expanding data volumes and increasingly complex user interactions highlight the urgent need for systematic usability evaluations. This research introduces and validates an innovative framework that integrates Nielsen’s Ten Usability Principles with the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), transforming qualitative usability heuristics into quantifiable and reproducible metrics. The two-stage evaluation first engaged 30 experts in pairwise comparisons to derive AHP-based weights, which were applied to assess five electrocardiogram (ECG) visualization systems. Subsequent surveys of 200 general users validated the framework, revealing a strong correlation between expert-weighted scores and user evaluations. Results confirm the framework’s efficacy in reducing evaluator bias, enhancing reproducibility, and prioritizing critical design elements. Merging qualitative and quantitative analyses ensures rigorous, objective insights for iterative interface refinement. The methodology provides actionable guidance for designers and researchers addressing data-intensive visualization challenges, demonstrating its potential to advance usability evaluation practices in healthcare analytics and beyond.