Ranking Usability Impact

So you have a bunch of usability issues, customer feedback, and desired tweaks. How do you start figuring out how to rank their impact on the user experience?

Questions to ask

• Scope: What is the scope of the issue? How many areas does it affect?
  • Which areas does it affect? Are they mission critical?
• Frequncy: What is the frequency? How often does it come up?
• Users: Who does the issue affect?
• Product strategy: Does the issue affect a key area?
  • Where is the product in its lifecycle? Ex: in an early-stage product, onboarding issues have a big impact.
• Blocking: Does the issue block user accomplishing their goal? Does it block product goals?
• Security & Trust: Does the issue compromise user security or their trust in the product?

Asking these kind of questions helps me assess the impact of an issue. Spelling out this kind of reasoning can also help explain the issue to the wider teams and sell the importance of a fix. Which can lead nicely to something like an [[!impact vs effort]] matrix exercise to prioritise and start fixing.