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Senior product design: owning outcomes · Proficient · Lesson 60 of 99 · 41 min video, then about 2 hours of practice
Choosing UX success metrics with HEART and goals–signals–metrics
After this you can write a metric plan for a feature: goals, the behavioural signals that would show them, the metrics you will track, a baseline, and the guardrails that must not move.
Why it matters
Owning an outcome starts with defining it before you design. Google's HEART framework (Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, Task success) and its goals-signals-metrics process are the most widely used way to do that for user experience, and they force the useful question: what would users actually *do* differently if this worked? Learn to pick one or two metrics per goal, to name a guardrail (what must not get worse: support tickets, error rate, time to complete), and to say in advance what result would make you change course. Trap: choosing metrics after launch to fit whatever moved. That is not measurement, it is storytelling, and experienced reviewers can tell.
How to use this resource
A forty-minute Nielsen Norman Group conversation with a UX-measurement specialist on choosing and tracking UX metrics over time, including the trap of vanity numbers. The most substantial free video treatment of the topic; listen as a podcast if you prefer.