Usability Metric for User Experience (UMUX) 101

Whether an app, a website, or a platform, the ease with which a digital product can be used and adopted by users is the alpha and the omega for its success.

This is why companies need to find ways to measure usability, ensuring that their product meets and exceeds users’ expectations. And this is where the Usability Metric for User Experience (UMUX) comes into play.

According to Harvard Business Review, acquiring a new customer is anywhere from 5 to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one.

This further stresses the importance of measuring the usability of our digital product to ensure the satisfaction and retention of users.

There is an abundance of usability metrics and frameworks available out there, but the Usability Metric for User Experience certainly stands out!

In this article, we will explore this invaluable usability metric as a standalone tool but also in comparison to other metrics. Keep reading to learn more, including real-world applications of this tool and ways to integrate it into your research.

What is the Usability Metric for User Experience (UMUX)?

The Usability Metric for User Experience, also known as UMUX, is a short usability questionnaire that was created to measure the user experience of digital products.

This usability tool was designed by two UX experts, James R. Lewis and Jeff Sauro, as a response to the need for a reliable and concise usability metric.

The UMUX questionnaire quickly gained popularity as it could easily be integrated into the various stages of product development.

Source

Why use UMUX?

UMUX offers a host of advantages as a usability metric. Here are some key ones:

✅ High response rates

High response rates are sought after when it comes to any type of UX study. UMUX, being a concise and quick questionnaire, is praised for its high response rates and overall completion rate.

Contrary to some of the most traditional usability tools out there, which consist of a large set of questions, UMUX is an easy-to-complete 4-question survey.

It can give you a good indication of the consensus around the UX of your digital product without asking users to sacrifice a ton of time for this!

✅ Versatile application

Another key advantage of this usability tool is its versatility. Usability Metrics for User Experience is a highly versatile tool that was designed for applications in a range of digital products, including websites, apps, and digital platforms.

It is exactly this versatility that makes UMUX an invaluable tool for UX teams in every industry, no matter the product.

✅ Cost-effectiveness

What is more, contrary to other time-consuming usability methods, UMUX is a cost-effective tool that can be used by organizations of all sizes, regardless of the budgets and resources available.

On top of that, UMUX is a standardized tool that has proved its reliability and validity across different contexts.

✅ Effective benchmarking tool

Another great benefit of UMUX is that it can also be perceived as an effective benchmarking tool. UX Benchmarking is an important aspect of usability research as it can be a great indicator of the product’s performance against industry standards.

Using this tool, businesses can have one standardized way of measuring usability not only within their product but across different products as well!

✅ Agile development support

Last but not least, UMUX is a great agile tool that can be integrated into agile development methodologies, which is all about quick iterations and continuous improvement.

Hence, UMUX is a solution that provides real-time actionable insights for those businesses that want to iterate quickly and efficiently.

Main Components of UMUX: 4 statements

The UMUX questionnaire is made up of four items, each designed to capture a different facet of usability that is rated on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree):

Items 2 and 4 are negatively worded.

1. [This system’s] capabilities meet my requirements.
   Perceived usefulness: Assesses whether the product delivers on its intended purpose and supports user goals.
2. Using this system is a frustrating experience.
   Frustration (negatively worded): Reveals whether users experience emotional barriers when interacting with the product.
3. [This system] is easy to use.
   Ease of use: Captures the general usability of the interface from the user’s perspective.
4. I have to spend too much time correcting things with this system.
   Error handling/efficiency (negatively worded): Focuses on the impact of errors, recovery effort, and efficiency in completing tasks.

By combining these four aspects, usefulness, ease, frustration, and error recovery, UMUX provides a balanced and standardized view of product usability.

The two negative items are particularly important, as they prevent response bias and highlight potential pain points.

How to calculate the UMUX score?

Now that we have briefly touched upon other alternative metrics, it is time to delve into the UMUX score and get a better understanding of how one can calculate this score.

Usually, this is a source of stress amongst a lot of UX researchers, but fear not, as calculating the UMXUM score is a pretty straightforward process, and we have prepared a handy, simple-to-use calculator you can use.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to calculating the UMUX score, including the crucial step of normalizing the data.

1. Collect user responses

Begin by collecting the responses from your participants. The four UMUX questions are rated on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 7 (Strongly Agree).

2. Reverse-code negative statements

To maintain a consistent positive scale, you must reverse-code the two negatively worded questions (items 2 and 4: “Using this system is a frustrating experience” and “I have to spend too much time correcting things with this system”).

This step is critical for accurate scoring.
The formula for reverse-coding is:

📐 Reversed Score = 8 − Raw Score

For example, a raw score of 1 becomes 7, a 2 becomes 6, and so on.

3. Calculate the score

Once all four responses have been converted to a 1-7 scale (with the negative items reverse-coded), you can calculate the final score.

Sum the scores: Add the four scores for each participant. This will give you a raw score between 4 (lowest possible) and 28 (highest possible).

Normalize to a 0–100 Scale: To make the score comparable to other scales like SUS, normalize the raw score to a 0-100 scale using the following formula:

📐 UMUX Score = ((Raw Score – 4) / 24) × 100

This formula ensures that a minimum score of 4 maps to 0, and a maximum score of 28 maps to 100.The final UMUX score for your product is the average of all participants’ scores.

UMUX Score Calculator 

To make it easier, we have prepared a calculator for you – a pre-prepared Excel sheet where you just copy your results, and the function will calculate your UMUX score automatically.

Download the calculator for Excel, or make a copy for Google Sheets.

Interpreting the results: What is a good UMUX score?

A UMUX score provides a single, easy-to-digest number for perceived usability. However, interpreting this number requires context. The ultimate goal isn’t just to get a high number, but to use the score to make informed decisions.

Practical bands for interpretation (heuristic, not a rule)

The UMUX score is viewed on a 0–100 scale. The higher the score, the better the perceived usability.

While these bands mirror common SUS interpretations, they should be used as guides, not as strict pass/fail rules.

• 80–100: Very good to excellent: The product is perceived as highly usable. Focus on minor refinements and maintaining this level of quality.
• 68–80: Above average / acceptable: The product is usable, but there may be some friction points. It’s a solid foundation, but there is room for improvement.
• 50–68: Marginal / Needs attention: Users are experiencing noticeable usability issues. This range indicates a need for focused research to diagnose and address the core problems.
• <50: Poor / likely blocking issues: Usability is a major problem. This score suggests significant design flaws or frustrating experiences that may be causing users to abandon the product.

The true value of UMUX is unlocked when it’s used as a diagnostic tool by pairing it with other metrics.

You can do that by pairing it with behavioral data: Correlate UMUX scores with task success rates, task completion times, and error rates.

For instance, if your UMUX score is low, but users are still completing tasks, it might indicate that the product is effective but not efficient. A low score paired with a low task success rate points to major usability problems.

Real-world applications of UMUX

UMUX is an invaluable tool for every UX researcher’s arsenal. Here are some real-world applications of this tool to get a better hang of its transformative power in practice:

📱 Mobile app A/B testing

The product team of a robust mobile app is working on the optimization of their current interface.

This is why the UX research team has decided to launch a UMUX survey to track usability across the two different versions of the app design.

Apart from the A/B metrics with the launch of the UMUX survey, the product team was able to better understand which version worked better for the users. The UMUX score played a definitive role in selecting the winning version.

🛒 E-commerce platform iteration

A successful e-commerce platform was on the lookout for a usability tool that would be able to provide the product team with insights into the usability of their checkout process as the conversion rates were not great.

They decided to add the UMUX survey on that part of their e-commerce platform to understand what the users who attempted to buy something on the website thought about the usability of the platform.

The results indicated that users were finding the checkout process to be a frustrating experience, so the UX team created a user journey map to better understand the different touchpoints and try to enhance those.

Learn more about user journey maps and how to build them in this quick video 🔽

🎨 Website redesign

An established website went through a major redesign and the UX team was keen to gather insights about the usability of the new design. To assess the effectiveness of the redesign the UX team deployed the UMUX tool.

The survey revealed that the redesign was indeed a success as users reported higher satisfaction rates!

UMUX and Other Usability Metrics

Here is a handy comparison of UMUX with some other commonly used usability metrics:

UMUX vs UMUX-Lite

First things first, let’s explore the difference between UMUX and UMUX-lite, as this is something that comes up quite frequently. UMUX-lite is a shorter version of the original UMUX.

More specifically, the original survey consists of 4 questions, while the streamlined version is reduced to just 2 questions.

UMUX-lite consists of those two questions: “Does this system meet my needs? Is this system easy to use?” UM-UX-lite can be particularly useful since it is even quicker and easier for users to complete.

On top of that, this tool can be particularly handy for mobile apps, as users might not be willing to spend a lot of time completing lengthy surveys.

It is worth noting that although UXMUX-lite is a reliable usability tool trusted by researchers across the board, this cut-down version might fail to offer more in-depth insights in comparison to the original UMUX.

This is why UX researchers should be aware of the trade-offs for each tool.

UMUX vs SUS

Another comparison that comes up quite often is that of the UMUX versus SUS, which stands for the System Usability Scale questionnaire.

The system Usability Scale tool is another widely used usability metric, and it is the outcome of a 10-question survey around the usability of a product.

This metric has been around for a long time, and it is trusted amongst researchers. The users need to rate the product using a 5-point Likert scale. In the end, the rating is converted into one single usability score.

Overall, this tool offers a more in-depth understanding of the usability of the product and pinpoints areas of improvement.

However, this comes at a cost as the survey is quite lengthy and complex, so the likelihood of the users dropping out is high, hindering in this way the results of the survey.

Hence, UMUX can be a great alternative to SUS as it can generally guarantee higher response rates while still being a reliable metric for the product’s usability.

Gather UMUX responses with UXtweak

UMUX is a powerful tool that every UX researcher and product team out there should tap into to measure and understand the general usability of their product.

If you are new to UMUX and you are looking for a way to incorporate it into your research look no further.

UXtweak is the best platform out there that can help you hit the ground running with collecting and analyzing your UMUX responses! Our easy-to-use survey tool allows for customization, making it super easy to design the UMUX questionnaire.

Try it yourself with a free account! 🐝

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