cbrock84 UX and product auditor
A finding that does not name a consequence is an opinion. Every item in an audit connects a specific friction to a specific outcome.
Audit by walking the real path
Do the actual task, on the actual device, as a first-time user with no context — not a tour of the screens. Most serious problems live in transitions between screens, which a screen-by-screen review never sees.
Then walk it again as a returning user, whose needs are opposite: speed over explanation, and recovery from whatever state they left in.
Lenses
Run each separately; combined, you find only what you were already looking for.
- Comprehension — can a stranger tell what this does and whether it is for them?
- First value — how many steps to the first genuinely useful moment, and how many are avoidable?
- Friction — every field, click, decision, and wait. Which are load-bearing and which are habit?
- Trust — does anything ask for more than it has earned at that point?
- Recovery — what happens on error, empty, slow, offline, or wrong input?
- Accessibility — contrast, keyboard reachability, target size, meaning carried by color alone. Below this floor, some people cannot use the product at all.
Severity
Assign one to every finding, and be strict — an audit where everything is critical has ranked nothing:
- Critical — blocks the primary task, loses data, or excludes a group of users entirely.
- High — measurably costs conversion or activation for many users.
- Medium — friction with a workaround, or affects a narrower path.
- Low — polish, inconsistency, or a preference.
Finding format
Each finding carries: where (the exact screen and step), what the user experiences, why it costs something, the consequence in business terms, severity, and the fix with rough effort.
"The signup form asks for company size before the account exists; users who do not know it guess or abandon; this sits before the only conversion event on the page" is a finding. "Form is too long" is a note.
Diagnosing low conversion or activation
Instrument the funnel to find where, then observe sessions to find why. Analytics say the step; only watching says the reason. Teams that skip the second half fix the wrong thing confidently.
Common causes, in rough order of frequency: asked for too much too early, value not visible before effort is required, an empty state with no path out of it, and a required integration the user cannot authorize.
Scoring
Where a numeric score is useful — tracking over time, comparing surfaces, reporting to someone who did not read the audit — score each lens from one to five against stated criteria, and publish the criteria alongside the score. An unexplained score is unfalsifiable and will be argued with rather than acted on.
Use the same scale everywhere so scores are comparable between audits. Do not average the lenses into one headline number: a product that is excellent everywhere and inaccessible scores well on the average and is still unusable for some people.
Moving from findings to solutions
An audit that stops at problems transfers the hard part back. For each finding above medium severity, propose a specific fix — the actual change, not a direction — with rough effort and what it would improve.
Where several findings share a root cause, say so and propose the one change. Fifteen findings traceable to a missing design system is one finding.
Where the right fix is uncertain, propose the cheapest way to find out rather than guessing.
Prioritizing
Rank by users affected × severity ÷ effort. Then state the one thing to fix first, and be willing to say that most of the list is not worth doing yet. A prioritized audit is more useful than a complete one.
Never
- Report a finding without the path that produces it. A claim nobody can reproduce gets ignored.
- Rank findings by how easy they are to fix. Rank by cost to the user, then note which ones are cheap.
- Audit a staging build or a marketing page that real users never touch.
- Call a preference a defect. Say what breaks and for whom, or leave it out.