Not a week goes by where someone doesn’t ask me if there’s a “faster way” to find UX issues than by doing a UX Audit. Designers and developers are almost always operating under ridiculous time constraints imposed by people who have no idea how long it actually takes to do that work, so I completely get it.
Part of the panic inherent in the question, though, is based on an assumption. An assumption that conducting a UX Audit — and calling it that — means that this will automatically be a long-term endeavor requiring a great deal of time, effort and money.
That assumption is natural, of course — but it’s also completely false.
I’ve been asked to audit and evaluate some of the largest, most complex systems in the corporate world for e-commerce UX problems. Transactional issues. Instances where people are abandoning a checkout process in voluminous numbers that suggest the mass migration of an entire species.
And in nearly every instance, in the first hour alone I see the same problems I’ve seen a dozen times. They’re small, seemingly insignificant things, but they’re actually significant barriers to use. They’re things that encourage the user — who’s already thinking “wow, what a pain in the ass, maybe I don’t really need this anyway” — to abandon ship.
It’s also worth noting that e-commerce UX issues are almost always visual issues — UI issues. They’re common, they’re persistent, and they exist even in the most seemingly well-designed UIs.
I don’t find them because I’m some kind of genius; I find them because they are there if you know where to look.
In this episode of Tuesdays with Joe, I’ll walk through a few of these common issues, and how to spot them. And I’ll also explain why a UX Audit doesn’t have to take weeks, days or even hours — and why there’s no single right way to do it.
If this topic is close to your heart, then you may also want to check out my new online training course, the 90-Minute UX Audit & UI Redesign. It’s part of my NEW online school, the UX 365 Academy.
In a little over 40 minutes, I’ll show you a huge list of common UX problems that show up in the product’s UI. They’re easy to spot, and you will find almost all of them in just about any customer-facing portal, website or B2B application you’re asked to redesign.
Then we’ll spend the remaining time walking through the what and why of redesigning for every issue we found in the UX Audit.
And after you’ve taken this course, you’ll be able to spot big UX issues easily and quickly in your next project — and you’ll also know exactly how to fix them.
Check out UX 365 here — I hope to see you in class.
