UX Audit Report
A report structure that leads with themes and priorities rather than an undifferentiated list of issues.
Definition
An audit report presents findings so they can be acted on: grouped into causes, prioritised by severity and reach, and each with a concrete recommendation.
Craft convention. True because the industry converged on it. Breaking it costs familiarity, not correctness.
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Summary
What was reviewed, how, by whom, and on what devices.
Three to five sentences a decision-maker can act on without reading further.
What to do first, and why that order. Not a list of everything.
Findings
Name the underlying cause, list the instances, state the impact, give the recommendation.
Include accessibility findings inline rather than in a separate annex, so they are prioritised alongside everything else.
Name the patterns worth preserving and extending.
Appendix
Every finding with location, severity and recommendation, for the team doing the work.
What this audit could not assess.
Turning findings into something acted on
The audit is finished. Whether anything changes is decided entirely by how the findings are presented.
- 1
Group by cause, not by screen
Thirty findings usually come from five causes. The grouped version is arguable; the flat list is exhausting.
- 2
Rank by severity and reach together
A moderate problem on the checkout outranks a severe one in a rarely used setting.
- 3
Give each group one recommendation
Concrete enough to estimate. If you cannot name a first step, the finding is not yet understood.
- 4
Sequence into now, next and later
Teams need a starting point more than they need completeness, and the order is the part they will actually use.
- 5
Attach the evidence
A screenshot, a recording, a metric, a criterion reference. Findings without evidence become opinions in the discussion afterwards.
- 6
Agree owners before you leave
An audit with no owner per theme has produced a document rather than a change.
Writing the report
Do
- Open with the three things that matter, because that is what the decision-maker will read.
- Say what is working as well as what is not, which makes the criticism credible rather than performative.
- Separate the criterion failures, which are not negotiable, from the craft judgements, which are.
- Keep the full list in an appendix, where it is available without being the argument.
Do not
- Do not present findings in the order you found them.
- Do not soften a blocking issue to keep the tone comfortable.
- Do not recommend a redesign when the evidence supports a set of fixes.
- Do not deliver the report and leave. The readout conversation is where the prioritisation actually happens.
Local chart
TPL·009 · Region VIII · Grid H4
This entry and the entries it is stated to connect with. Each line is labelled with what the connection means.
Continue from here
Each link says what the connection is, so you can tell a principle from an alternative from a thing people mix this up with.
Often used with
These usually appear in the same screen or the same decision.
- Heuristic EvaluationTPL·008 · Template
- Accessibility AuditFLOW·012 · Workflow
- Prioritising Design WorkFLOW·006 · Workflow
Check your work
Review passes that test whether this was done properly.
- UX Audit ChecklistCHK·008 · Checklist
Nearby in the Atlas
Adjacent territory, found through shared tags rather than a stated link.