UX assessment of your digital product

Introduction

UX assessment as defined by NN Group is - the process of evaluating a product or service’s user experience by using metrics to gauge its relative performance against a meaningful standard.

“If you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist.” –Brene Brown, Ted Talk

A UX Design partner can help in performing the assessment that will help identify gaps in the existing capabilities. The insights gained can be utilized to redesign the strategy.

When Should you Conduct UX Assessment?

1. Assess the overall progress of a product or service
2. Compare your user experience of your current product against an earlier version, a competitor, or an industry benchmark.

UX assessment is essentially comparing the performance of a product/user experience with a standard. Performing a UX assessment requires knowledge of measuring metrics.

There are three types of metrics that are measured. Through a set of research methods (surveys, usability testing) and analytics, metrics can be broadly classified as

1. Perception metrics (e.g. NPA scores)
2. Descriptive metrics (e.g. abandonment rates)
3. Outcome metrics (e.g. conversion rates, average order sizes, number of calls by reason, how often customers escalate to the call center)

These metrics are owned by various departments, like Marketing, IT, and Customer Service. Depending on the requirement a set of metrics that align with the organization's key performance indicators (KPIs) are chosen and tracked.

Google HEART

Google’s UX research team has come up with a framework called Google HEART, which precisely measures the quality of experience delivered to your consumer. Google’s HEART framework provides a concise overview of different types of metrics you may want to collect and gain actionable insights.

For the assessment, two to four metrics that focus on different aspects should be considered.

When it comes to collecting the metrics, factors that are considered are as follows:

1. the time commitment that the research method requires
2. cost of such a method
3. the skill of the researchers involved
4. and the research tools available to you.

With the right combination of research methods and metrics, a combined assessment of both behavioral(qualitative), as well as analytical reports(quantitative), can be generated which gives a holistic idea of the product's performance.

A UX partner will help conduct the research methods which are crucial for the assessment. Through Surveys and Quantitative usability testing, a few metrics such as time on task, success rate, satisfaction, etc. can be determined. The methods can be conducted through interviews with the users by qualified user researchers.

Analytic metrics can be obtained from the product backend. (Abandonment rates and feature adoption, Average time spent retention)

Conclusion

UX assessment not only helps a designing company in identifying the quality of user experience, but it also helps in taking notes of areas that can be worked upon to further enhance user experience. If done by a UX partner, the transparency of analysis is even more refined.