UX audit services — every redesign decision tied to a named principle.
Most UX audits hand you a punch list of subjective gripes. Mine ties every friction point to a named law — Hick's, Fitts', Doherty, Nielsen-5 — so the redesign is defensible across the table from a sceptical engineer or a stretched PM.
I'm Masfa Zulfiqar — a UI/UX designer in Karachi running a small audit practice for founder-led startups. The signature audit work is Take Therapy: a self-directed audit of a digital therapy app, every finding grounded in a named UX principle. The same methodology is the spine of every paid audit engagement.
New: the free UX Audit Scorecard runs the same 5-section, 40-question methodology I use on paid engagements — you get a score, prioritized fix list, and shareable result URL in about 15 minutes. The paid audit picks up where the self-audit stops.
What you actually get.
4-flow scope, not "audit the whole app"
Every audit picks the four flows where friction is costing you something real — onboarding, the primary action, billing, and one you nominate. A 40-screen audit gets ignored. Four flows fits inside an engineering sprint.
Every friction point tied to a named UX principle
No 'this feels off.' Each finding lands against a named law — Hick's, Fitts', Doherty, Nielsen-5 — so the redesign is defensible across the table from a sceptical engineer or a stretched PM.
Before/after redesign proposals
Annotated screens of the existing flow paired with redesigned screens, sitting side-by-side in the same Figma file. Each change is visible against what it replaces, with the principle on the callout.
Annotated screen mockups
Every key screen is delivered as an annotated mockup — the friction marked, the redesign overlay, the principle cited. The audit reads as a deck a non-designer can act on, not a slide of vibes.
Prioritized roadmap — impact vs effort
Findings ranked on a 2x2: how much pain it's costing users, how much engineering it costs to fix. You leave with a one-page roadmap that lets you ship the high-impact / low-effort wins inside the next sprint.
Every decision justifiable in two sentences.
The rule I give myself going into every audit is simple. Each redesign decision has to be justifiable in exactly two sentences: what problem it solves, and which named principle says the existing pattern was wrong. Not "this looks better." Not "this feels more modern." A named law, every time.
There's a difference between "this feels off" and "this violates Hick's Law." Both might end up at the same redesign. But only the second one is defensible across the table from a sceptical engineer, a stretched founder, or a product manager weighing the cost of the change against everything else in the backlog.
The framing also scopes the audit. A 40-screen redesign would get ignored as too ambitious for an outside proposal. A four-flow audit, with every change traceable to a law, fits inside an engineering sprint.
The full walkthrough of the methodology — with the before/after on a real therapy-app redesign — lives on the blog: How I anchored a UX audit to four named laws.
Four named laws do most of the heavy lifting.
Most audits I've run end up with the same four principles doing the diagnosis. They're not the only UX laws, but they're the ones that cover the highest-frequency failure modes in real product UX.
| Law | What it diagnoses | Typical fix |
|---|---|---|
| Hick's Law | Decision density per screenFix: Chunk multi-decision forms into one decision per step with a labelled progress signal. | Chunk multi-decision forms into one decision per step with a labelled progress signal. |
| Fitts' Law | Hit accuracy on destructive actionsFix: Move destructive buttons further from the default thumb position; downsize them in the visual hierarchy. | Move destructive buttons further from the default thumb position; downsize them in the visual hierarchy. |
| Doherty Threshold | Time-to-decision-critical informationFix: Surface price, rating, availability, and other decision inputs inline — don't hide them behind a tap. | Surface price, rating, availability, and other decision inputs inline — don't hide them behind a tap. |
| Nielsen's 5th heuristic | Whether destructive actions are confirmableFix: Add a confirm sheet with the consequence in plain language; the back-out option as prominent as proceed. | Add a confirm sheet with the consequence in plain language; the back-out option as prominent as proceed. |
Take Therapy — a UX audit grounded in named laws.
A self-directed UX audit of an existing digital therapy app. Scope was four flows — home, specialist listing, booking, appointment management. Each friction point was tied to a named UX law and proposed against an annotated redesign in Figma.
Honest scope: this is a proposal, not a shipped change with measured impact. The claim the audit makes is that every change has a principled reason — not "it looks better," but "the existing pattern violates a specific named law and here's the version that doesn't." That's the level of defensibility every paid audit ships at.
- Hick's Law — single-page booking form chunked into three labelled steps with a progress bar.
- Fitts' Law — destructive cancel moved two taps deeper, downsized in the visual hierarchy.
- Doherty — price and rating surfaced inline on the specialist card, no drill-in needed.
- Nielsen-5 — every destructive action gated by a confirm sheet with the consequence in plain language.
Three weeks, four steps.
Walkthrough as a user
Before opening Figma, I use the product the way your real users do — for a few days, with deliberate attention. The friction list comes from observation, not from a checklist applied cold.
Map friction to named principles
Each friction point gets tied to a named UX law — Hick, Fitts, Doherty, Nielsen-5. If a finding can't be tied to a principle, it doesn't make the audit. That's the discipline.
Propose redesigns with rationale
Annotated before / after screens in Figma. Every change comes with a two-sentence justification: what problem it solves, and which named law says the existing pattern was wrong.
Walkthrough call + delivery
A 60-minute walkthrough call with you and your eng / product lead. The Figma file, the prioritized roadmap, and a Loom of the full audit ship at the end of the call.
How to scope an audit.
Most audits land on the Sprint — $450, 1–2 weeks, four flows mapped to named UX laws. If you want the redesigns delivered as production-ready hi-fi mockups, go Full Project; for quarterly audits as the roadmap ships, the Retainer.
- D1–2 weeks
Design Sprint
Quick win, ship in 2 weeks.
$450A focused engagement to fix a specific flow, audit an existing product, or design a single feature end-to-end.
- 1–2 weeks of focused design time
- 1 specific flow OR a heuristic audit
- Hi-fi screens for desktop + mobile
- Interactive Figma prototype
- Async Loom walkthrough at delivery
- 1 round of revisions
Best forFounders who need a specific thing done well, fast — landing page, onboarding flow, settings redesign, or an audit before raising. - Most chosenF4–8 weeks
Full Project
End-to-end, research to handoff.
$800–$1,200The full engagement — user research, wireframes, hi-fi screens, prototype, usability testing, and developer handoff.
- Discovery interviews + research synthesis
- Wireframes for every flow
- Hi-fi design (iOS + Android OR desktop + mobile)
- Design system + reusable components
- 5-person moderated usability test
- Interactive prototype + walkthrough
- Dev handoff specs + 2-week Q&A office hours
- Up to 3 rounds of revisions
Best forFounders shipping v1 or doing a serious v2 redesign. The work that needs to feel right, not just look right. - MRolling, 2-month min
Monthly Retainer
Ongoing design partner.
$500/moReserved hours every month for ongoing design work — new features, iteration, system maintenance, async reviews.
- 40 reserved design hours / month
- Weekly 30-min sync
- Async Figma + Slack throughout
- Design-system governance + extensions
- Roll-over up to 8 hours / month
- Priority response (< 24h on weekdays)
Best forFunded startups (seed to Series B) with a roadmap that needs a consistent design hand — and a founder who values speed over RFP processes.
Full pricing breakdown, side-by-side comparison, and add-ons live on the pricing page.
Recent projects.
See all case studies- EnrichplayCrypto / Web3
Enrichplay
Responsive crypto product — one design system across mobile + web.
- Take TherapyMental health
Take Therapy
Self-directed UX audit + redesign proposal grounded in named UX laws.
- Painted JuttayE-commerce
Painted Juttay
Brand-led ecommerce design for a Karachi hand-painted juttis label.
What else I design.
- 4–8 weeks
Mobile App UI/UX Design
Full mobile app design from research and user flows through high-fidelity Figma prototypes and developer handoff.
- 3–6 weeks
Responsive Web Design
Marketing sites, product sites, and responsive web apps that look and feel right at every breakpoint.
- 2–6 weeks
UX Research & Redesigns
User interviews, usability testing, and redesigning existing products to fix what isn't working.
- 4–8 weeks
Design Systems & Figma Libraries
Reusable component systems and design-token libraries that scale across teams and platforms.
- 1–3 weeks
Prototyping & Interaction Design
High-fidelity interactive prototypes for user testing, investor demos, and engineering buy-in.
UX audit questions.
The signature audit work is Take Therapy — a self-directed UX audit of a digital therapy app, scoped to the booking, cancellation, specialist-listing, and appointment-management flows. Every finding was tied to a named UX law (Hick's, Fitts', Doherty, Nielsen-5) and the redesign was delivered as annotated before/after screens in Figma. I've also done internal heuristic evaluations as part of larger redesign engagements on Painted Juttay and Enrichplay — both shipped with the audit-driven changes in production.
Most UX reviews give you a punch list of subjective gripes — 'this button is too small,' 'this page feels cluttered.' Mine ties every finding to a named UX principle so the redesign is defensible across the table from a sceptical engineer or a stretched PM. 'I want to add friction here' is hard to argue for. 'I want to add friction here because Nielsen's 5th heuristic says we should prevent errors at the source' is much easier to push through code review. The framing also scopes the audit honestly — four flows that need work, not a 40-page deck nobody reads.
Both. The default Audit Sprint is the audit + redesign proposal as annotated Figma. If you want the redesigns delivered as production-ready hi-fi mockups with developer handoff specs, the Audit + Redesign engagement covers that — 4 to 8 weeks, $800–$1,200 depending on scope. Teams iterating fast post-launch usually move to the Ongoing Audit Retainer after the first sprint.
Three weeks end-to-end for the Audit Sprint. Week 0 is walkthrough-as-a-user, Week 1 is mapping friction to named principles, Week 2 is proposing redesigns in Figma, Week 3 is the walkthrough call and delivery. Mobile app UX audits and responsive web audits both fit this shape — the methodology doesn't change by platform, only the screens being audited.
Yes — that's a common engagement shape. An outside audit is often more useful to teams with strong internal design opinions, because the framing constraint (every finding tied to a named law) takes the conversation out of subjective design territory. Your team gets a defensible roadmap they can argue for in front of engineering, with the political cover of an outside perspective. I usually run the walkthrough call with your design lead and product lead together so the handover is clean.
Yes — happy to sign your mutual NDA or my mutual NDA template before any product details are shared. The audit work involves spending real time inside your product as a user, so the NDA usually goes out before our second call. IP on the audit deliverables transfers to you on final invoice payment.
The default Audit Sprint is $450 — fixed price, 1–2 weeks, four flows, annotated before/after Figma file and a prioritized roadmap. If the engagement extends into delivering the redesigns as production-ready hi-fi mockups with developer handoff, the price scales to $800–$1,200 depending on screen count and flow complexity. No hourly billing on either engagement — fixed scope, fixed price, 50% on signing and 50% on delivery.
Also explore.
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Wallets, DeFi, responsive crypto products.
Fintech UX Designer
Payment flows, KYC, compliance-first design.
E-commerce UX Designer
Brand-led stores, one-of-one product pages.
AI Product UX Designer
LLM interfaces, confidence signals, agent flows.
Hire in Karachi
Karachi-based, available for international engagements.