Of course, your goal is to get more and more users and engage them with your application. But how can the user experience of your product help? How can you measure if your users are engaged? And how can you find out why they are not? How can you measure user experience?
Measuring design and utilizing data are essential steps toward creating a sustainable product. UX research is a key ingredient and UX metrics are the solution. Let me show you how to use data to improve your product.
When we closed our last project, our team was so proud. The design was fabulous. The product owners were happy because they saw their plans coming alive. The ideas were tested and researched in a pleasant way. The last round of user tests showed the prototype was seamless and easy to use.
Yes, but… what happens next? When you launch, how will you know if the design is successful? How will you know if your users are engaged?
The answer is out there, and it lies in data. Metrics help turn data into digestible information, which can help in drawing conclusions and making decisions. Defining the appropriate ones is not an easy task. In fact, it can be really tough.
So, in order to define the right metrics for your app, let’s go through the following steps of measuring user experience:
Metrics are standards of measurement assessing a website’s/application’s efficiency, performance, progress, or quality. It provides much more insight into the real problems you’re trying to solve.
UX metrics are one type of metric. They represent a product’s user experience, which is hard to quantify. But some useful frameworks can help measure user experience.
Many big brands use UX metrics to improve the user experience of their products (Google, Airbnb, YouTube). One from Youtube which measures users’ engagement is “Average number of minutes spent watching videos/user/day”.
The most straightforward answer is better decision making. That is one of the biggest benefits when you measure user experience. The key is to figure out what pieces will improve learning and decision making. Without an endless budget for design, it’s important to know where a product suffers the most.
If there is one thing to remember from this article, then it’s this:
You need a plan to measure user experience.
Know what to look for. Just wiring Google Analytics to your site is not enough. That can do more harm than good. Not knowing exactly what to looking for can get you lost in data. Even worse, you may come to the wrong conclusion, which will lead to the wrong decision.
Doesn’t sound good, does it?
So, before getting into the technical details, take a step back. Look at the big picture, and spend the time and resources to make a measurement plan.
There are a few frameworks which can help define the metrics to measure product user experience. Kerry Rodden, Hilary Hutchinson and Xin Fu from Google’s research team designed the one which we use at our UX company: the HEART. It’s extremely useful!
There are five categories to brainstorm about from the user’s perspective:
First, define just one or two things that are really important for the product. The fewer actionable metrics, the better. For example, let’s choose “Engagement” for the product YouTube for this exercise. After choosing a category, there is a three-step process to follow:
Goal > Signal > Metrics
Start with the goals! In my experience, it can be really hard to start to measure user experience on an abstract level. In this step, define the “big picture”. What does engagement mean from a user’s perspective?
The goal of “engagement” for the product YouTube is “for users to enjoy the videos they watch and discover more videos.”
Only after goals are defined can they be broken down to signal. How do we know we have reached the goal? Define signals which will answer this question.
The signal for “engagement” will be “the number of time users will spend watching videos.”
Signals can be transformed into metrics that can be measured in the product.
The metric of the signal will be “average number of minutes spent watching videos/user/day.”
Read more about the HEART framework from its creator, Kerry Rodden. If you want to introduce the framework to your team, I highly recommend the Digital Therapy presentation.
Other frameworks which can help define metrics include the PULSE and the AARRR.
Once you have a plan, you can start the dirty work and apply your metrics to your product. There are tons of analytics tools that can help. The most popular ones include Google Analytics, Kissmetrics, Mixpanel, Crashlytics, Firebase, and Hotjar.
Defining the right metrics to measure your design is a team sport. The right result requires several different types of knowledge. You need people who understand…
How do you measure your product? Do you measure user experience? Have you used any other framework which did or did not work for you? We’d be more than happy to hear your opinion on this topic.
UX studio works with rising startups and established tech giants worldwide.
Should you want to improve the design and performance of your digital product, message us to book a consultation with us. We will walk you through our design processes and suggest the next steps!
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