Is it time to redesign?

How does one know there’s something wrong with their product? The answer could be to do a UX audit; it’s a complex study of a digital product meant to evaluate its efficiency and uncover its pain points. As noted by Daria Khutoryanskaya, a senior UX designer at Selectel, the audit can be beneficial for several reasons: first, to assess the operability of up-and-running products; second, to prepare for a product redesign; and third, to analyze a decrease in key metrics or in the case there are no such metrics. Any UX audit breaks down into four steps: defining product goals and outcomes, validating current statistics, analyzing key interface states, and preparing reports and roadmaps for teams. 

An audit is naturally followed by a redesign. Normally, this process helps enhance UX and key product metrics. At the conference, Ksenia Ponomareva, a UX researcher at ecom.tech, shared insights into the recent redesign of the Samokat app (a Russian food delivery service – Ed.). As the new edition launched, the team started to receive negative feedback from customers who claimed that the search inside the app became more difficult because they had to take an extra step to find a product on the catalog. Thanks to the team’s swift work with reviews, they were able to quickly fix the problem area and maintain customer loyalty. Ksenia stressed that in such processes, UX researchers are more important than ever – a new solution doesn’t necessarily mean a successful one. And to promptly recognize the problem, there should be specialists who will study the product before and after the change.

UX research 101

Any product audit is built on data, including UX research outcomes, which helps specialists see how customers interact with their product or interface. Previously, UX research came synonymous with the analysis of complex human-machine interactions that required certain qualifications. But now the situation is different: people use the internet and gadgets every day, interfaces are becoming more simple and similar to each other, and the demands for fledgling developers are shifting, too. Today, specialists no longer need coding skills to build software – what they have instead are templates and specialized programs.

On the one hand, this trend makes the interaction between humans and machines more simple and accessible, but on the other – the rapid growth of technologies makes human-product relationships more complicated. Now, at the forefront of user behavior are not logic chains (“press A to get B”), but profound motifs, emotions, and life context, which go beyond the capabilities of conventional analytics. That’s why, as emphasized by Evgeny Novichikhin, the head of qualitative research at SM Lab, and Leonid Krivoshein, a senior researcher at SM Lab, more value is now placed on offline studies, which use complex quality and group methods (incl. ethnography, diaries, follow-up visits, focus groups, and content analysis) and therefore look at a human, not figures.

However, the comeback of traditional research methods isn’t the only trend on the market. Some companies, on the contrary, take an active advantage of contemporary tools to analyze their customer experiences – and that includes AI. Elizaveta Sorokina, a UX researcher at Avito, spoke about how bigtech researchers can apply neural networks in their practice.

Avito uses AI for five main types of tasks: research design, desk research, analysis of qualitative and quantitative data, and design of workshops and team sessions. For that, the company relies on a number of tools, including Google NotebookLM (for limiting the set of sources for analysis and reducing the chance of using unverified sources), Perplexity (for selecting reliable sources for research and performing various tasks), and LLM Neuroslav (the company’s internal model for the analysis of sensitive data).

Making interfaces more accessible

Inclusive design makes products and services more accessible to a wider audience, including people with disabilities. Veronika Vysotina, an editor and a lead of the FAQ and Skills team at Gosuslugi, believes inclusive content should have these key properties: 

Perceptibility. Content should be accessible by people with different abilities and interfaces, no matter if they use an audio description or a screen reader. Products that contain different types of content are reported to have great user engagement, coverage, and opportunities for further customization.

Clarity. Interfaces and content should be apparent to people of any age, profession, or physical abilities. This can be achieved by using simple sentences and headlines, structuring text, avoiding redundant negative phrasing, and thoroughly describing user journey when making instructions.

Reliability. Interfaces should remain accessible even if a new version or operating system comes out. 

Must-have UX/UI skills for 2026

During their discussion, experts from Telekominvest, Infourok, Lesta Games, and some others pointed out what skills aspiring interface developers and researchers will need to succeed: 

Interdisciplinarity. Specialists are giving way to generalists. To grow professionally and successfully lead teams, specialists are now expected to have wider competencies, including those in management, neural networks, and analytics. These skills will help them automate routine tasks and focus on creating more complex and exciting solutions.

Prototypes and data, not arguments. Direct confrontation with a client is oftentimes less efficient than the “show, don’t tell” tactic. Instead of arguing, it’s better to create a quick prototype or run a mini-study to visually show the product’s strengths and risks to the customer. This will shift the dialogue from the context of subjective opinions to objective facts and user scenarios.

Critical thinking. Specialists need to not only know how to work with AI but also be able to analyze its performance and find machine errors. For that, they need to write efficient prompts, ask clarifying questions, and filter information. ITMO students develop their critical thinking skills as part of their studies at ITMO. 

According to Yuri Solonitsyn, an experienced designer and a moderator of the conference, students should pay attention to the type of the IT company when choosing their future place of work. He believes that different companies – custom developers, startups, agencies, or non-profit projects – vary not only in their inner workings but also UX expertise. With this in mind, students can make the choice that will be in line with their career goals.

“The conference aims to be a platform where different national companies in human-machine interactions can share their experiences. ITMO boasts a solid expertise in interface development: we teach Bachelor’s students in the program Computer Technologies in Design (with a UX/UI track) and Master’s students – in the program Multimedia Technologies, Design and Usability. Additionally, our Center of Usability and Mixed Reality produces and tests various UX/UI solutions at ITMO: for example, we regularly audit our inner ISU system and consult our colleagues at other departments on interface building,” says Artem Smolin, the head of ITMO’s Center of Usability and Mixed Reality.

WUD@ITMO is a St. Petersburg-based international conference dedicated to World Usability Day. The event is organized by ITMO’s Faculty of Software Engineering and Computer Systems and Center of Usability and Mixed Reality. The theme for 2025 was Emerging Technology and Human Experience. At the conference, interface developers and researchers discussed digital accessibility issues, essential skills for aspiring human-machine specialists in 2026, and UX solutions at top Russian companies and state services, including Avito, Samokat, Selectel, VTB, Gosuslugi, SM Lab, and others.