KPIs for UX Process

This article covers KPIs for a standard User Experience Process (UX Process). The KPIs help measure and track if the UX Process is enabling a user driven organization. The KPIs mentioned here are best applicable to organizations that do software products for another business (hence Business to Business).

What are KPIs?

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are statistics which when measured and tracked guide about progress towards an objective. Say during an individual’s fitness journey tracking number of seconds spent in ‘plank’ exercise could be an indication of progress.

In addition KPIs help one do a retrospective and identify course corrections, improvements required to move more effectively towards the objective.

Reference UX Process

Based on User Centered Design, the process and artifacts below are what one possibly can have in an organization. Every organization may have variations of this depending on what works with their users and for them.

Reference UX Process

KPIs of UX Process

The approach taken here to defines the KPIs is a simple 4 step process

1. Objective: define a long term objective you want to work towards.
2. Goals: define the short to long term goals based on the objective.
3. Actions: define actions that will help achieve a goal or set of goals
4. KPIs: for each action define KPIs such that it show progress towards the goal

KPIs for UX Process

Measure and Track KPIs

Below is one of the ways to measure and track KPIs. The method explained especially works for an organization following Agile methodology for product development.

Notes and References

1. User Centered Design: is an approach to designing a product or service that keep user at the center of every decision. It defines a set of principles which when followed help enable design to meet user needs.
2. Quality Gate: a set of pre-defined quality criteria which must be met before moving a software from one phase to another.
3. Definition of Ready: a set of predefined criteria which must be met for a product backlog user story to become actionable.
4. Definition of Done: a set of predefined criteria which must be met for product backlog user story to be accepted as done.
5. Learning and Development: is a way of growing people in an organization by first evaluating them and then through various means helping them develop skills.
6. Organization Skill Matrix: is a matrix of people in an organization and for a set of skills their interest, knowledge, level of proficiency.
7. Design Studios/Design Workshops: is a workshop generally conducted at the start of a product (re) design. It involves getting together the entire product team in one room with objective of establishing a common UX vocabulary and start the process of discovery, definition, design of user problem or need.
8. UX Practioner: is any member of product team who applies User Centered Design principles and UX Processes while doing product development.
9. UX Designer: is a UX specialist who works in the product team and following UX Processes helps design the product. They typically spend more time on designing the user interactions with the product.
10. UX Architect: is a UX specialist who is responsible to ensure that the product design has a the right User Experience. They typically spend more time in discovery to understand the user and their problems or needs.
11. UX Evangelist: is a UX specialist who helps creates awareness about benefits of UX and convinces members of product organization to adapt User Centered Design principles and UX processes/practices.

References:

Own research and learning on the job.

Various content @ https://www.interaction-design.org/