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Although generic usability heuristics lists have been popular with researchers and practitioners, emerging new technologies have called for more specific heuristics. One of these heuristics was proposed by Sutcliffe and Gault in 2004 [37]. This paper examines research which has cited these heuristics with the aim to see how it has been exploited. The results showed that a fifth of the papers citing the heuristics have used the heuristics fully or partly, and that researchers have adapted it to their current needs. Following this result we proposed that a patchwork of heuristics might be more useful than a single list. We evaluated a crisis management training simulator using the virtual reality heuristics and discussed how the outcome of the evaluation fitted the patchwork.

Voice communication is vital for collaboration between first responders and commanders during crisis management. To decrease cost, training can take place in a virtual environment instead of in a real one. It is non-trivial to build and evaluate a virtual environment for training complex command. To understand the method-resources required for evaluating a training simulator for crisis response, this paper presents a case study of applying several resources. Method-resources were analysed for usability problems and Mechanics of Collaboration (MOC). The results show that the Group Observational Technique and the MOC analysis are appropriate for analysing factors of collaboration and communication. The think-aloud technique, observers, experts in the domain and advanced task scenario were important resources. In only a few cases sound and video were necessary to analyse issues.

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