DEV Community: Amf Floyd

I Built an AI UX Auditor. Then I Realized That Wasn't the Hard Part

Amf Floyd — Sun, 03 May 2026 18:58:07 +0000

I shipped Parallax in 3 weeks. You paste a URL, it audits your UX against Nielsen's 10 heuristics + WCAG 2.1, scores it, and tells you what's broken. Took longer to debug the email capture form than to train the AI to think like a UX researcher.

The hard part wasn't the product. The hard part was realizing I had no idea if any of it mattered.

Here's what no one tells you about bootstrapping a dev tool:

Most founders operate blind. I do website audits and UX testing, mostly for games and side projects, and I was shocked how many teams don't have access to actual UX research. They're shipping based on gut feel and support tickets. So I built a 60-second UX audit that lives in a browser — drop a URL, get scored findings, five minutes later you've got actionable insights. Nielsen's heuristics, accessibility checks, remediation suggestions. The thing works.

But then I launched it and got 2 visitors a week.
That part was humbling. The product was good. Distribution was a ghost town.

The insight that actually surprised me: When I started diving into where UX problems hide, I found this weird pattern. Sites aren't broken because designers are bad — they're broken because founders never run UX checks. They think "UX audit" means hiring a consultant for $8K. So they don't do it. They ship something, watch it tank in analytics, then realize the actual problem was a 5-step form or a CTR below the fold.

An audit that takes 60 seconds and costs $0 should theoretically fix that. And it's absolutely happening — but only for people who know to look for it.

So here's what I'm trying:

Instead of waiting for SEO to eventually work, I'm doing what the playbooks actually recommend: write something real, post it where people building things actually hang out (here, Reddit, Indie Hackers), and see if that changes anything.

Try Parallax free (https://parallax-ux.com/audit) — paste a URL, audit runs in 60 seconds. Full findings behind an email gate (so I can follow up if something's broken). No credit card. No BS.

If this version resonates, cool — we'll keep shipping. If not, I'll learn that distribution is harder than I thought and should've just built a plugin instead of a SaaS.

Either way, the product's good. The distribution is the thing I'm trying to figure out.

I built a tool that runs a full UX + accessibility audit on any URL in under 5 minutes

Amf Floyd — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 05:58:58 +0000

I've been doing UX audits manually for years — heuristic evaluations, WCAG checks, writing up findings. It takes hours per site. So I built Parallax to automate the whole thing.

How it works:

Paste any URL
It crawls up to 25 pages
You get a scored report covering Nielsen's 10 usability heuristics + WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility checks — 25+ criteria per page
Each finding includes severity, what's wrong, and how to fix it.

Free tier: 1 audit/month with summary scores and category breakdowns.

Try it here: parallax-ux.com/audit

I'd love feedback — what would make this more useful for your workflow?

How We Built an Autonomous UX Auditing Agent

Amf Floyd — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 03:21:49 +0000

We recently shipped Parallax — an AI agent that automatically audits UX quality. Here's how it works and the challenges we solved.

The Problem

Traditional UX testing requires:

Hiring UX researchers ($80-150K/year)
Running quarterly research cycles (2-3 months)
Manual heuristic evaluation against Nielsen's 10 usability principles
Accessibility scanning (WCAG compliance)
Generating reports and prioritizing fixes

Result: Most companies do UX audits 2-4x/year. Problems discovered in Q2 don't get fixed until Q3.

The Solution: Autonomous Auditing

1. Crawling Smart User Paths

Instead of crawling every page, we identify critical flows:

Sign-up → Payment
Search → Product detail → Checkout
Login → Dashboard → Action

Each flow gets scored individually, so you see where users actually struggle.

2. Heuristic Evaluation

We implemented Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics as a scoring framework:

Visibility of system status
Match between system and real world
User control & freedom
Error prevention
Error recovery
Flexibility & efficiency
Aesthetics & minimalism
Recognition vs. recall
Documentation
Recovery from errors

Each is scored 0-100 based on page structure, copy clarity, interaction patterns.

3. Accessibility Scanning

WCAG 2.1 AA compliance checking:

Color contrast ratios
Heading hierarchy
Form labels & descriptions
Keyboard navigation
Focus indicators
Image alt text

4. Smart Prioritization

Not all issues are equal. We weight by:

Impact (how many users affected?)
Effort (how hard to fix?)
Criticality (does it block core flows?)

Why This Matters

Speed: Audit cycles go from weeks to minutes
Frequency: Catch regressions before they hit production
Scale: Run across 50+ competitor sites to benchmark
Cost: No hiring UX researchers for routine audits

Try It

parallax-ux.com – enter a URL, get a UX audit in 30 seconds.

Questions? Happy to discuss our heuristic scoring, how we handle dynamic content, or architectural challenges we solved.