Measuring Success
How do you measure success as a designer? The question gets at the purpose behind how you define design and why you pursue it. There isn’t one right way to answer this, though it’s a good provocation to get at how you view progress. For me, three areas compose success—product success, team success, and personal success.
Product Success
There is a direct link between product success and end user benefit. Do the people who use what you make accomplish their goals? That is, what they do, how they want to feel, and who they want to be. Does your product help its users overcome obstacles? This presupposes that you know what these goals and obstacles are. Preparation is key to determining product success. Goal-Directed Design begins with research—build the framework of what makes up a useful solution before heading to Figma. Learn, build, measure rather than build, measure, learn. The best way to encapsulate this research and make it useful is in a set of personas. These models carry your research forward into defining requirements and designing a solution. During requirements definition, the personas identify the outcomes the product needs to achieve. There are four components:
1. Success Metrics – The “party moments.” These criteria indicate users are meeting their goals or overcoming problematic obstacles.
2. Progress Metrics – These are the stages on the way to success. What are the steps that lead to a party moment? Progress Metrics measure the path to success.
3. Problem-Value Metrics – This suite of metrics assigns a dollar value to the obstacles the personas face.
4. Value Discovery Metrics – These metrics identify new opportunities for growth that the product opens up for the personas.
You as the designer get to determine these metrics. Build them on a strong persona set, and they will gauge your unique product and how well it meets the needs of its users.
Team Success
Marty Cagan (2017) identifies three principles of successful product teams.
1. Tackle risk first before building anything
2. Work collaboratively, not in silos
3. The team is there to solve problems, not implement features
These measures of team success closely align with product success. When the team is on purpose, it is delivering product success. Yet there is also a more human component to team success. Stefan Klocek (2011) in his article “Pair Design – Better Together; the Practice of Successful Creative Collaboration” discusses many ways to view successful creative teams. I’ll discuss two of them here, but the whole article it worth a read.
The first is limit distractions. A design team needs to have one project. If attention the team divides attention, they cannot focus on any one thing. Progress slows and the products suffer. Can you dive in with everything you’ve got? If so, that’s team success.
The second is we do our homework. Product success depends on doing the research. Team success is the degree to which you are able to learn about the domain, understand the problem, and understand the users.
Team success is the ability to work together, do the homework, and limit distractions.
Personal Success
When measuring success as a designer, I also consider personal success in at least three areas:
1. Career Growth – How does this product propel me in my own design practice? What new experiences does it give me? How am I stretched beyond my comfort zone? What new people will I meet and have the opportunity to learn from? How will my work on this product drive the company forward? These questions drive personal success through career growth.
2. Working on a Product I Care About – Sometimes, the product itself is so compelling that I want to associate with it. It may support a cause I care about or gives me the chance to work with good friends.
3. Vocation – Vocation means “calling.” I want to fulfill my purpose through my work. If I’m able to do this, that is a personal success.
These three ways are how I look at personal success, the third layer to measuring success as a designer.
Closing Thoughts
Measuring success is both subjective and objective. The designer controls these criteria by defining them according to the personas’ success. Thinking through the lenses of product success, team success, and personal success—this is how I measure success.
References
Cagan, M. (2017). INSPIRED: How to create tech products customers love (Second edition). Wiley.
Klocek, S. (2011, April 18). Better together; the practice of successful creative collaboration [Blog]. Cooper Journal. https://web.archive.org/web/20140806034304/http://www.cooper.com/journal/2011/04/great_creative_partnership_pai
Spool, J. (2020, May 19). Article: Why UX Outcomes Make Better Goals Than Business Outcomes. Leaders of Awesomeness. https://leaders.centercentre.com/posts/6453848
