Impact of research and design
How do I demonstrate to the management that research and design contribute actual value to the business side of things? How do we measure this? Let’s leave the subjective space and let’s dive into objectivity.
The obvious A/B test
The easiest way and almost common sense is probable an “A/B comparison” in which we would let two designs compete with each other and based on user behaviors we crown one of the version to be king. But let’s make it a bit more complex and let’s move towards OKRs and KPIs.
The more complex OKR/ KPI approach
POs, sales, HR, growth and so many more have defined OKRs with which effort and success can be measured so why don’t we do the same on a research and design level? The five most common KPIs impacting and organizations business are probably:
1.increasing revenue
2.Decreasing costs.
3. Increasing your business.
4. Increasing existing business.
5. Increasing shareholder value.
Decreasing costs etc.
One thing that good design can usually impact on is decreasing costs and a low hanging fruit I found various times was including FAQs into an app to reduce customer support efforts which easily countable. Now a question that I am still dealing with is if research/design should use unique KPIs which would not rely on no one else? Until today I could not find these since design will always depend on developers (at least when it comes to digital products or services) but research/design can be called “responsible” for a KPI even if others are related.
Still I like to use the metaphor of a football team: there is not a single position of a player which is responsible to win the match but a team play and a good strategy that lead to success. Same in a company. UX is not suppose to be responsible for the revenue and/or engagement but still can play an important role.
A good example for this is the NPS: It is misleading to think that a single area of an organization is responsible for the NPS but when we get more specific and look on an abandoned register process and through research we find out that x% of users abandon because of misleading CTAs then UX can be surely be taken into account.
A not so final word on metrics
You can tell that the more research/ design specific a KPI is defined the easier it is to hold research and design accountable for this KPI. When it comes to metrics we have to take some more ideas into account: Design and Research role descriptions, the org chart, talents’ seniority and much more. Only if we take all this into account we can measure research and designs’ success and we can compare performances through different moments of an organization’s history.