How I make

at least

$5000
with
UX AUDITs
Swipe
Intro
I’ll let you in on a secret.
The least I would charge for an audit
is about 5k.
However, you don’t have to

pay me dime.
In this guide, I’ll walk you through my
process, so you can audit your
product yourself.
Without further ado, let’s get into it.

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What UX Audit Isn't

Repeat after me.

UX audit isn't a heuristic

evaluation.

You can't have a designer look

through your app. Document a few

blunders. And call it an audit.

At best, this is a questionable

heuristic evaluation.

An audit is a comprehensive

review --->

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Intro to UX Audits
UX audit isn't a single activity.
It's a collection of activities that
assess a product's
Usefulnes
Usabilit
Visual appea
Valu
Stimulation
Here’s when you conduct one ->

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What is the value of a

UX audit?
You know you didn’t do a good job
with UX.
I know you skipped due process.
And, rest assured, users feel

that too.
A UX audit is your chance to redeem
your product.
Here’s what it consists of.

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Structure of a UX audit
The number and types of activities
will depend on the specifics.
In this carousel, we'll cover 5 most
common activities:
Usability Testin
Desk Researc
User Interview
Heuristic Evaluatio
Analytics

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 Audit Activity 1

Usability

Testing

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Usability Testing
Usability Testing is having an
interview with your users (real or
potential) while having them interact
with your product.
In the meantime, you'll be making
notes, and asking follow-up
questions.
When should you use it? --->

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Usability Testing

When to use it
If you have something to test, and
someone to test it on, do it.
You have a product or a prototype

You have access to real or

potential users

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Usability Testing

Benefits
Identify ~80% of usability issues
early in the design proces
Validates the product and
solution concepts
Answer essential questions (e.g.
“Is it something users need?”
Find better solutions quicker.

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Usability Testing

The process
Formulate a pla
Recruit your user
Run usability interview
Remote vs. in-person
Questions to ask
Document your findings

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Usability Testing

Formulate a plan
Start by establishing clear goals and
identify the hypotheses.
Establish the outcomes and metrics
that will validate your hypotheses.
Test your hypotheses during
usability sessions.

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Usability Testing

Recruit your users

Focus on recruiting people that have
a significant overlap in your potential
users.
Look for similar goals, behaviors,
aspirations, attitudes, and so forth.
Ideally, you need to talk to 5 users.
That way you’ll spot the most issues
with the least time.
Where to find users? --->

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Usability Testing

Recruit your users

A few places you can search:
The product team
Interviewed persons
Facebook or LinkedIn groups
Upwork
respondent . io
usertesting . com
No one’s interested? – Try incentives.
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Usability Testing

Incentives
Incentivizing your users is a common
practice in usability testing.
Especially if you’re looking for

in-depth insights.
Incentives typically start

from $50 / user.

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Usability Testing

Tools you’ll need

Here’s the stack that I use:
Zoom (easy to conduct and
record sessions
Figma (to host a prototype
Otter.ai (to transcribe the
interviews
UX Pilot (to generate questions
FigJam (to map the results of the
sessions
ChatGPT (to process the
transcripts)
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Usability Testing

Questions you

should avoid:
Don’t ask leading question

What makes this experience

good
How intuitive was the interface
Was the product copy easy to
understand?
Ask these instead --->

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Usability Testing

Question Examples
What’s your opinion on the
navigation within the product
How did you feel about using this
particular feature
Would you prefer to perform this
action differently
What would you change in the
product’s workflow?
UX Pilot can help you generate
better questions in a few clicks --->

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Usability Testing

UX Pilot: User Interview

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 Audit Activity 2

Desk

Research

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Desk Research
Just like people, products sometimes
have baggage.
Messy breakups with designers or
developers are top of the list.
Conduct a meta-study of everything
these people did.
That way, new team members can
accumulate all the knowledge
produced thus far.
When should you use it? --->

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Desk Research

When to use it
You've had numerous designers

work on your product

Your team has documentation at

least in a rudimentary form

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Desk Research

Make it easy
You only realise how valuable
documentation is when you need to
do desk research.
Do yourself a favour and keep a
clean documentation in
Figm
Atlassia
Notio
Any other tool you prefer.

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 Audit Activity 3

User

Interviews

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User Interview
This is essentially a therapy seance
with users.
You need to learn as much about
users' problems as you can. Don't
talk about solutions yet to avoid
coloring users' opinions.
You would do user interviews mostly
to determine whether there's utility
behind the tool or idea you have in
mind.
When should you use it? --->
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User Interview
When to use it
When there's a lot you don't know
Your product (or feature) idea is

poorly defined

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User Interview
All of the tips about number of users,
and where to look for them we
shared in the usability testing section
apply here as well.

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 Audit Activity 4

Heuristic

Evaluation

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Heuristic Evaluation
Good UX has rules and principles.
Breaking them, more often than not,
results in a broken experience.
One such collection of rules is
Nielsen's 10 usability heuristics.
Checking your interface against
these rules (or heuristics) is called
heuristic evaluation.
When should you use it? --->

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Heuristic Evaluation

When to use it
You have an experienced designer

in your team (preferably multiple);

You need to quickly find the most

serious problems.
It's best if the designers are external.

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Heuristic Evaluation

The heuristics
The heuristics go as follows

Let’s break them down.

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Heuristic Evaluation

The heuristics

Visibility of system status

The system should always keep users

informed about what is going on, through
appropriate feedback within reasonable
time.

Match between system and

the real world

The system should speak the users'
language, with words, phrases and
concepts familiar to the user, rather than
system-oriented terms.

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Heuristic Evaluation

The heuristics

User control and freedom

Users often do mistakes and will need a

clearly marked "emergency exit" to leave
an unwanted state.

Consistency & standard

Users should not have to wonder whether
different words, situations, or actions
mean the same thing. Follow platform
conventions.

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Heuristic Evaluation

The heuristics

Error prevention

Eliminate error-prone conditions or check

for them and present users with a
confirmation option before they commit
to an action that’s likely to be a mistake.

Recognition over recall

Minimise the user's memory load by
making objects, actions, and options
visible. The user should not have to
remember information from one part of
the dialogue to another.

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Heuristic Evaluation

The heuristics

Flexibility & efficiency of use

Make sure the new users can quickly

learn, while letting seasoned users

utilise shortcuts.

Aesthetic & minimalist design

Dialogues should not contain information
which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every
extra unit of information in a dialogue
competes with the relevant units of
information and diminishes their relative
visibility.

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Heuristic Evaluation

The heuristics

Flexibility & efficiency of use

Make sure the new users can quickly

learn, while letting seasoned users

utilise shortcuts.

Help users deal with errors

Error messages should be expressed in
plain language (no codes), precisely
indicate the problem, and constructively
suggest a solution.

Now here’s how you conduct

the evaluation -->

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Heuristic Evaluation

How to conduct one

First, get yourself a good
template. (We have one on our
website adamfard . com)
Then, take screenshots of all
screens and states from the app.
Go through the app looking for
errors, and make notes on the
screenshots you took.

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Heuristic Evaluation

How to conduct one

If you don’t know where to start, you
can use UX Pilot review tool in
Heuristic Evaluation (as starting point):

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Heuristic Evaluation

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Heuristic Evaluation

3
Design Review:

Visibility of System Status

No problem found.

Match between System and the Real World

No problem found.

User Control and Freedom

No straightforward option to revert actions or navigate back once a call

to action is initiated.

Consistency and Standards

No problem found.

Error Prevention

Clear call-to-action buttons; however, it would help to have confirmation

prompts for actions such as "Book a Call" to prevent accidental
submissions.

Recognition Rather Than Recall

Navigation labels are clear, but icons could accompany text like "AI Tools
for UX Designers" to aid in recognition.

Flexibility and Efficiency of Use

No personalization options visible for frequent users or shortcuts to

important functions.

Aesthetic and Minimalist Design

The design is coherent with a good balance of text and visuals, adhering
to an aesthetic and minimalist design.

Help Users Recognize, Diagnose, and Recover from Errors

No visible error messages or troubleshooting help, though this may not

be applicable for the functions shown.

Help and Documentation

No visible help section or links to documentation, which could assist

users in understanding the services better.

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 Audit Activity 5

Gauging

Analytics

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Analytics
All of the audit subactivities thus far
were (mostly) qualitative.

As with anything qualitative, there's

room for error and bias. To mitigate
that, you need numbers.
Install tools such as google analytics,
Microsoft Clarity, Mixpanel, Hotjar,
etc.
These will do wonders to
complement your thoughts with real
usage data.
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Analytics

When to use them

You have an experienced designer

in your team (preferably multiple);

You need to quickly find the most

serious problems.

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Analytics

The tools
Here are a few tools we strongly
recommend you install asap
Google Analytic
Clarit
Mixpane
Amplitud
Hotja
Kissmetric
& anything else you can get your
hands on.

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Before you go

Now this is what ~$5k gets you.

I hope this short guide will help

you polish your product’s UX

without breaking the bank.

If you’d still rather have me do it,

drop me a DM

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