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Measuring design

How to define effective metrics

Successful experience design balances the needs and desires of the user with what is viable for an organisation to deliver.

In determining effective and meaningful metrics for measuring design solutions (especially where there is no obviously quantifiable or tangible outcome), Council should consider whether its selected metrics are able to be:

  1. derived from strategic objectives and priorities

  2. restricted to a reasonable number of measures so that important data is not lost amongst the unimportant

  3. easy to extract and interpret

  4. shown to everyone whose action can affect the results

  5. used to promote understanding, learning and improvement.

The key to effectively calculating Return on Investment (ROI) on design is to find ways to translate qualitative results into quantitative comparisons and then attribute costs to those quantities. ROI = Gain / Investment