Usability and Engagement: Success Metrics of Design

In an age where every consumer interaction with a brand is measurable across multiple digital channels, it is important to understand which metrics and measures are valuable to you, based upon your role in a business. It is a common mistake to measure everything, at regular intervals, without an understanding of how to make these measurements actionable. Data holds different meaning to different individuals within an organization. It may be used to inform marketing tactics, advertising spending, product development, or user interface design decisions.

Design Measurement
I am a user experience designer, so I will focus on the measurements and research used to assess the success or failure of a Design, within a digital context. User experience designers need to understand how to analyze the user interface of digital applications, in order to assess:

1. The usability of the Design

2. The Design's level of engagement

Usability -
Individuals visit web sites and download applications to achieve specific tasks. User experience designers spend time with these individuals, prior to conceptualizing a Design of an application or web site, to better understand and document the relevant tasks of these individuals. The easier it is for end-users of an application to achieve the tasks that they came to perform, the better the Usability of that application's design and user interface.

Usability Testing-
User experience designers encourage a business to perform Design validation of key elements of an application or web site's Design (usability testing), in order to ensure that anticipated, end-user tasks can be easily completed. Usability testing is a process by which UX Designers recruit participants, who are representative of the target, end-user segment for the Design, and observe them trying to complete key tasks, using the Design. The level of frustration that end-users exhibit, as well as their rate of success or failure, in attempting to complete key tasks, ultimately determines the usability of the Design. Measuring usability, typically, does not require a statistically significant sample size, however, new, online Usability Testing tools do allow for larger populations.

Engagement -
While usability is certainly an important criterion for a Design's success, it is merely "table-stakes." That's because a Design that is highly "Usable" does not ensure that it will be widely adopted by consumers. Therefore, It is also important to measure the level of engagement of the Design.

Engagement Analytics -
Measuring the level of adoption of an application can be done at many levels. This type of measurement is quantitative, and requires a large amount of data. At a high-level, marketers should benchmark the amount of traffic that an application receives, and set goals/projections for a redesigned application interface. However, marketers will need to isolate the key screens that have been redesigned, or new features that have been added to the application, to begin to understand if the new Design is driving engagement and adoption.

Brand Perception and Awareness -
A great way to understand if new products, applications, or Design is affecting the popularity or perception of a brand, is to take the brand's pulse through social media measurement. There are now, four conventional key performance indicators (KPI) that are used to gauge a brand's reach and perception (taken from the online tool, socialmention.com)

1. Strength - likelihood that the brand is being discussed in social media

2. Sentiment - ratio of positive to negative mentions in social media

3. Passion - likelihood of individuals repeatedly mentioning the brand in social media

4. Reach - measurement of the range of the brand's influence in social media

As with any other quantitative measurement, benchmarks should be taken prior to new Design enhancements, or the introduction of new marketing campaigns, products, applications, etc. Projections should also be made, based on business objectives. Marketers may, then, effectively utilize these key performance indicators to assess the impact, level of engagement, and likely adoption of brand enhancements (including Design changes).

Jonathan Lupo - http://www.twitter.com/userexperience