[SOLVED] While establishing Heuristics for usability testing,do you advise using your own heuristics or pre defined ones

While establishing Heuristics for usability testing,do you advise using your own heuristics or pre defined ones

I am conducting a usability study of medical content delivery systems and I was planning to use some heuristics present in a CHI paper for my Heuristic evaluation.However since the area of focus is slightly different from the paper,I am not sure if all the heuristics are applicable and whether I should use them as a guideline.

How would you handle such a situation,would you create your own heuristics or use an existing one and adapt it to suit your process ?

Thanks

Solution

A good heuristic evaluation is always tailored for a specific project needs. Use the paper as a start point. Learn the heuristics from it. Adapt the heuristics as much as needed to your domain/project. You also should take into account other classic heuristic evaluation templates, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic_evaluation#Nielsen.27s_heuristics.