Do-it-yourself toolkit to audit the user experience of your products and services. We know that UX is too important for every business to be ignored. But we recognize that not all businesses have a dedicated team or person in-house to do this, or have the budget to hire consultants. This DIY toolkit provides a step-by-step guide for anyone to do a simple experience audit.

1. DIY UX
AUDIT
Do-it-yourself toolkit to audit
the user experience of your products
and services

2. DIY UX AUDIT
Brought to you by Somia Customer Experience
http://somiacx.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0
International License.
Do-it-yourself guide to audit
the user experience of your products & services
2015
1st Prototype

3. What is UX Audit?
A user experience evaluation of products & services
to determine its effectiveness
to meet the intended experience goals
of both the customers and the business.

4. Why UX Audit?
Conducting UX Audit regularly helps you uncover
experience issues and define ways to continuously
improve to enhance conversion and ensure user
satisfaction.
Good UX ▶ Happy Users ▶ Good Business!

5. Why a DIY Toolkit?
We know that UX is too important for every
business to be ignored.
But we recognize that not all businesses have a
dedicated team or person in-house to do this,
or have the budget to hire consultants.
This DIY toolkit provides a step-by-step guide
for anyone to do a simple experience audit.
Yes, anyone.
As long as you can have empathy and
stand in the customers’ shoes. ;)

6. Overview
Before jumping to the audit, you need to first:
1. Understand the Business
2. Understand the Customers
Then follow these steps to do the audit:
3. Test The First Impression
4. Walk The Journey
5. Inspect The Details

7. 1
Identify Business Goals
Put on the business hat

8. Understand The Business
Put on the business hat while asking the following:
● What does the business want to achieve by having
the product?
● What are the indicators of success / KPI?
● What is the Unique Selling Proposition?
● What do you want customers to say when they are
talking about the product?

9. 2
Understand the Customer
Walk in their shoes

10. Understand The Customers
Step into the customer’s shoes and ask the following:
● Who are the target customers?
● What goals do they have?
● Why do they want to use the product?
● How do they use the product?

11. 3
Test the First Impression

12. Look at the product for 5
seconds:
● Does the product look inviting?
● Is it clear what the product is for and why it is
relevant for the user?
● Is it clear what the user can do?

13. 4
Walk The Journey

14. The Scenarios
List down the scenarios the user can do
e.g.: compare products, trying on product, see
detailed information, filling out order form, make
payment
1. _______________________________
2. _______________________________
3. _______________________________
_______________________________
_______________________________

15. Try out every scenario,
and evaluate:
● Is it obvious what the user needs to do to
complete the scenario?
● Does the flow feel clear and guided?
● Does every scenario provide the least possible
steps?

16. 5
Inspect the Details

17. Inspect every part of
the product to:
1. Be sensually inviting
2. Convey clear message
3. Have strong call to action
4. Be consistent
5. Affords appropriate actions
6. Have visible status
7. Be quickly and easily accessible
8. Prevent errors & guide recovery
9. Provide guidance

18. 1. Sensually inviting
● Are the screens easy on the eye, buttons fit
nicely on the fingers?
● Is the look and feel pleasing? Does the product
evoke the intended emotions?
● Do the sensorial elements (visual, gestural, etc)
create harmony?
● Does it have sufficient contrast that if involves
texts, it makes them easy to read?

19. 2. Clear message
● Is the message clear, easy and obvious to
understand?
● Does it use familiar words relevant for the user?
● Is it free from any distractions, e.g.: unnecessary
text and images?

20. 3. Strong Call to Action
Call to Actions (CTA) bring users closer to the final
goal
● Does it have a strong primary call to action?
● Is the Call to Action clear and well-labeled?
● Is the primary Call to Action easy to find and
located above the fold (visible without scrolling)?

21. 4. Consistent
● Is the way to interact consistent throughout the
product? (e.g.: the way to buy a shirt consistent to
the way to buy a skirt)
● Is the use of language and terminology
consistent?
● Is the use of design elements (pictures, videos,
buttons, links, icons) consistent?

22. 5. Appropriate affordances
Affordance refers to users’ interpretation on what
action they can/cannot do with an object.
● Is it obvious which areas are clickable and vice
versa? e.g.: link looks like a link, button looks like
a button.
● Is it clear how to interact with the product?
e.g.: there’s a clue for users to scroll

23. 6. Visible status
● Is it clear where the user at any point in time?
(e.g.: highlighted menu item on a website,
signage throughout a venue)
● Does it inform users what is going on through
appropriate feedback?
(e.g.: status to tell users if the page is loading, the
LED Is off when the product is turned off)

24. 7. Quick & Easy Access
● Does the page load quickly? Are the buttons
visible and reachable? Does the venue easy to
find?
● Is the site’s content easy to read (appropriate
font size and color contrast)?

25. 8. Prevent error and
guide recovery
● Does the product prevent error from occurring
in the first place?
● When there is an error, is the error message
clear ? e.g.: it indicates precisely what is the
problem and provides a solution to recover from
the error
● Does it provide contextual help? e.g.: help
tooltips that explains a field in an online form.

26. 9. Provide guidance
● Is every mandatory field clearly marked?
● Is every field labeled clearly, free from
ambiguity?
● Does it provide clues for the expected input
values?
● Does it validate for information accuracy before
user can move to the next step?

27. THE END
Brought to you by Somia Customer Experience
http://somiacx.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0
International License.
We are continuously improving this toolkit.
If you have any input or would like be a
contributor, please let us know at:
lab@somiacx.com

28. Somia Customer Experience
www.somiacx.com