November 25, 2025 Smashing Newsletter: Issue #535
This newsletter issue was sent out to 181,892 subscribers on Tuesday, November 25, 2025.
Editorial
What does success look like for your UX team? Hopefully, it’s not just the velocity of delivery or the number of completed Jira tickets per month. As designers become a bit less tactical and a bit more strategic, we have to find ways to measure UX, and what impact it has on business.
This newsletter is all about that — how to measure UX and how to establish design KPIs. From UX metrics and UX scorecards to measuring experiences, not product use. If you’d like to dive deeper, we have a whole practical guide on measuring UX — along with the upcoming live online workshop starting next week.
We’ve also just announced our shiny new SmashingConf Antwerp 2026 🇧🇪 — a friendly, practical conference in beautiful Antwerp, with insights and hands-on workshops on design, UX, design systems, design patterns, AI, accessibility and Figma. Get your early-bird ticket!
Upcoming workshops this/next week:
- Theming Design Systems Design
with Samantha Gordashko. Dec 1–15 - How To Measure UX And Design Impact UX
with Vitaly Friedman. Dec 1–12 - The New CSS Toolkit Dev
with Kevin Powell. Dec 3–17 - Figma Workflow Masterclass Design
with Christine Vallaure. Dec 10–16 - Jump to all workshops →
Wishing you a fantastic rest of the week, everyone — and happy Thanksgiving as well!
— Vitaly
1. Practical Guide To Measuring UX
Terms like UMUX or SEQ can seem quite intimidating when you set foot into the world of UX metrics. No worries, they don’t have to be, and you don’t need to be a statistician to evaluate a design, either. To help you take your first steps towards objective evaluation, Roma Videnov wrote an easy-to-read guide to measuring UX.
2. UX Metrics
If you want to learn more about the different types of UX metrics at your disposal, Alex A. Szczurek compiled a comprehensive list, covering everything from behavioral and attitudinal metrics to engagement and outcome metrics. For each of them, she summarizes what it measures, why it’s important, and, if necessary, how to calculate it.
3. The Value Of The Right UX Metrics
“To measure someone’s happiness, measure whether you’ve improved their life,” argues Jared M. Spool. He shares a story of how a UX team used outcome-driven metrics instead of standard UX metrics to demonstrate the value of their work to executives. A great example of how you can make the impact that UX improvements have on a business much more tangible.
4. UX Metrics Cheat Sheet
You’re already familiar with measuring UX and are looking for a quick overview of UX metrics? Measuring U published a cheat sheet that lists more than 70 UX metrics, organized from task-level to study-level, and highlighting popularity, ease of collection, and reference benchmarks at a glance. A handy little helper you might want to keep close for future reference.
5. How To Select A UX Metric
With so many UX metrics available, it can be challenging to decide which ones to pick to get exactly the insights you need. To help you choose the right measures for your observations, Jeff Sauro and Jim Lewis break the decision down into five simple steps. This approach works particularly well when combined with the Measuring U cheat sheet.
6. Quantifying And Communicating UX
If you’re looking for a real-world example of how to quantify the user experience and communicate the results with a UX scorecard, Matthew Garvin has got you covered. He wrote a helpful guide that dives deep into the maths behind UX metrics and how to turn the analysis into a scorecard that enables teams to clearly identify priorities for their next sprint.
7. Accessibility Metrics Scorecard
Accessibility isn’t just a compliance checkbox; it’s a human right, and when treated as a core principle, it can become a driver of innovation, user satisfaction, and business growth. Based on insights from companies across different industries, the team at Stark created an Accessibility Metrics scorecard template that helps you establish or refine your accessibility processes and connect them to business KPIs.
8. How To Create A UX Scorecard
How has our product changed over time? How does it compare to others in the industry? UX scorecards can help address questions like these. Nikki Anderson and Allison Corr wrote a practical guide to creating a UX scorecard in eight steps. It covers everything from setting goals to conducting your study and visualizing your findings.
9. Meet Accessible UX Research, A Brand-New Smashing Book 📚
In the past few years, we were very lucky to have worked together with some talented, caring people from the web community to publish their wealth of experience as printed books. For our newest book, we have teamed up with Dr. Michele A. Williams: Meet “Accessible UX Research.”
“Accessible UX Research” is your practical guide to making UX research more inclusive of participants with different needs — from planning and recruiting to facilitation, asking better questions, avoiding bias, and building trust. Print edition shipping early 2026. eBook available for download in December 2025. Pre-order the book, and save off the full price.
That’s All, Folks!
Thank you so much for reading and for your support in helping us keep the web dev and design community strong with our newsletter. See you next time!
This newsletter issue was written and edited by Geoff Graham (gg), Cosima Mielke (cm), Vitaly Friedman (vf), and Iris Lješnjanin (il).
Smashing Newsletter
Front-end, design and UX. Sent out 1× a week.You can always unsubscribe with just one click.