You can’t go wrong by starting out using the 10 Usability Heuristics for User Experience Design, as created by Jakob Nielsen: http://www.nngroup.com/articles/…
My Quora answers, UX Articles
What are the parameters for user experience audit?
They are “best practices” for interaction design, and they are (in summary):
- Visibility of system status
- Match between system and the real world
- User control and freedom
- Consistency and standards
- Error prevention
- Recognition rather than recall
- Flexibility and efficiency of use
- Aesthetic and minimalist design
- Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
- Help and documentation
You can take some of these and easily reframe them in the form of a question (for example, “Can the user efficiently accomplish tasks with the screens?” Other heuristics are not so easy to refactor and use in an evaluative way… so you’re going to want to have additional criteria.
Another good criteria is the “UX Honeycomb” by Pete Morville: http://semanticstudios.com/publi…
- is it useful?
- Is it usable?
- Is it desirable?
- Is it findable?
- Is it credible?
- Is it valuable?
- Is it accessible?
You’ll see that Morville’s honeycomb also includes content and accessibility, something that is not given nearly enough attention. It’s important to evaluate any experience using those “prisms” as well.
A good start at content evaluation is here: http://library.albany.edu/usered…
A good source for accessibility is here: http://www.w3.org/WAI/eval/
Finally, always try to evaluate or audit an experience from the perspective of the user, and not from an academic perspective. Does it work FOR THEM, helping them accomplish the tasks they need to do? It can “pass” all the criteria in the world, but if it doesn’t support a user’s need it “fails” that test.