The Simple Way to Conduct a UX Audit
What you'll learn
- How to evaluate the quality, usefulness, usability and value of any app, website or software system by conducting a UX audit.
Requirements
- General familiarity with UX, UI Design and Interaction Design principles
Description
Auditing — which just means evaluating and analyzing — the quality of an app, website or enterprise software system's user experience (UX) is the fastest way to figure out what's working, what isn't, and how to improve it. Where the user experience is failing people; where they're stuck or confused or frustrated. Or, in many cases, where they decide to stop using it altogether.
What I’m going give you in this course are my core rules for conducting a UX Audit: where to look, what to look for and what questions to ask to determine what needs to be improved (and why).
I'm going to walk you through the 5 parts of conducting a simple, effective UX audit or evaluation:
Uncover goals and intended outcomes on both sides of the UX value loop, meaning both for the business and for the product’s users. What do people expect to be able to do — and what do they want to happen — as a result of using this site, app or system? What does the business need to happen in order to ensure the product's usefulness, user/customer loyalty and profitability?
Review existing analytics. Organizations track the performance of their sites and apps using Google Analytics. The data collected can be quite valuable to you, because it can tell you some things about who’s interacting with the product and what they’re doing while they’re there.
Review the product’s core interaction states:
The Blank State. This is what people see the very first time they launch it or when they log in.
The Working State. This is what people see and interact with during the normal course of use, with data, content and controls in place.
The Error State. This is what people see when something goes wrong.
Review the product based on UX heuristics across Language, Priority, Universality and Visual Clarity. When I look at the core interaction states above, I’m evaluating what I see and experience across these five categories.
Deliver findings and recommendations for improvement. I'll show you an example of the video deliverable I give to clients to communicate the issues I've found and what I recommend they do to resolve them.
You'll also see concrete examples of each step, taken from one of my UX audits with a client, along with my downloadable UX Audit Workbook. After you’ve gone through the product and considered everything above, you’ll use the workbook to take a second, deeper dive into the 170-plus individual elements and attributes you need to pay attention to during your audit.
Who this course is for:
- UXers, Designers and Developers tasked with improving the UX of any kind of app, website or software system.
Instructor
Joe Natoli has launched five successful online courses with Udemy on the topics of User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) Design, with more than 300,000+ students enrolled to date across multiple platforms.
Joe has been preaching and practicing the gospel of User Experience (UX) to Fortune 100, 500 and Government organizations for three decades. That work includes commercial industry leaders like Facebook, Google, Kroll/Duff + Phelps, Broadridge, Conde Nast, Johns Hopkins, Mettler-Toledo, PHH Arval, SC Johnson and Wolters Kluwer, as well as government agencies like the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Dept. of Defense and the Dept. of Homeland Security.
Joe devotes half of his practice to writing, coaching, and speaking. From guiding students at the beginning of their careers to integrating UX into the work of seasoned veteran developers and designers, he is immensely passionate about the inherent power of UX and design.
The remaining half of Joe’s practice is dedicated to training Enterprise Design and Development teams, helping them integrate best practices in UX into their product development efforts. In addition, he does a limited number of UX Audit engagements to help organizations identify and overcome UX-related obstacles to product adoption.
Joe has been speaking publicly on the topics of User Experience (UX) and Design across the globe for 24 years, from global conferences like UX LIVE, HOW Design Live, SDD, DevWeek, and IxDA South America. He also makes it a point to spend time talking to students across the country at colleges and universities, in an effort to give back what others have so generously given him.
In addition, he has written numerous articles about the roles Design and UX play in business success for publications such as Fast Company, SmartCEO, The AIGA Journal, The Baltimore Business Journal and Business Monthly. His articles, advice and videos can be seen at his website, as well as across various social media platforms.