I think these are some of the key points to look at.
1. Who is the team and what have they done before? Do they look credible and do you think they’ll be able to deliver on the project? Are they a business with no blockchain developers who have pivoted to crypto just because it’s popular now.
2. What stage is the project at and have they had any institutional investment from VCs?
3. What do they need the token for? Is blockchain tech necessary in the project?
4. Read the whitepaper - does it make sense? Is it fleshed out and full of actual information rather than supposition and fluff?
5. What do they look like on social media and Reddit? Do they look reputable and are they interacting.
6. What’s their sentiment within the wider community and the media?
7. What does their token distribution look like and how will the tokens be split across activity?
8. Are they open source? If so check out Github and see what their activity looks like. Not all projects are open source.
9. Does the project fulfil a proper use case - use your gut - are people going to use this service in the future.
this is a good summary and I as a beginner would always also check out forums like bitcointalk, reddit, steemit etc. Also watch youtube videos of your desired coin, check social medias in general. How is the hype around the coin? go check out sites like icobench or icodrops. (deversify your sources as much as possible to get an overview).
Also it is probably hard for beginners to evaluate the value of a coin, but some maths can help looking for the circulating/max supply x price to get a rough overview of the market cap the ico will end up with.
For example if market cap would reach 200 million and your value guess is also 200 million, think twice if it is worth to buy ico tokens
Ask yourself what is the potential of the coin, are there any risks involved, are there any similar coins already out there?