Usability is still an evolving concept. Heuristic evaluation is one of the best known and widely employed usability evaluation methods, but forming heuristic evaluators is a challenging task. The paper discusses how novel evaluators perceive Nielsen's usability heuristics. It presents the results of a two years' study made at Miguel Hernandez University of Elche, in Spain. It also compares the findings with a similar experiment made at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaiso, in Chile.