As a designer creating new products and services, it is normal to feel often perplexed or unsure of how well the product will be received by the prospective customer/users. There are various metrics devised for this purpose. We can process approach are Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Google HEART Framework.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
This Consumer satisfaction score measures their customer’s willingness to recommend their company’s products to others. NPS uses three metrics –
- Promoters
Customers in this segment score between 9–10. These people are loyal enthusiasts who will keep buying and referring to others.
- Passives
These customers score between 7–8. They are satisfied yet neutral. This type is weak to competitor offerings.
- Critics
These are folks that score between 0–6. They are often angry and dissatisfied customers who can damage the brand and hinder growth through negative reviews and testimonials.
Net Promoter Score is calculated by simply subtracting ‘the percentage of detractors’ from ‘the percentage of promoters’.
NPS = % Promoters — % Detractors
For example, considering a pool of 100 customers, if 20% of respondents are detractors, 10% are passives, and 70% are promoters, the NPS score would be 70–20 = 50.
NPS is derived from a long-term rating database from individual customers – using email market research surveys carrying detailed responses. The surveys should be administered with a proper plan.
What is a good Net Promoter Score?
NPS ranges from 100 to +100. Thus, any company with a score over 0 is considered to be in a good light, viz., it has a greater number of promoters than detractors. Large corporations generally get score over 70. A 2018 survey indicated that among big scorers, Netflix led with an NPS of 64, followed by Paypal, Amazon, Google, and Apple with scores of 63, 54, 53, and 49 respectively.
Google’s HEART Framework
The Google HEART framework was proposed in 2010 by the Google research team and is now widely used by designers to measure success. The HEART framework aims at measuring user experience on a large scale with the following five categories:
- Happiness: How do people feel about the product? We can use this to measure the ease of use of the product.
- Engagement: This category focuses on the two basic questions – How are people using the product? How often do users desirably interact with the product?
- Adoption: This metric focuses on the increase in product adoption, i.e., the acquisition of new users. This can be based on the number of accounts created in a specific time range.
- Retention: This category deals with the number of users returning to use the product. For example, how many active users from a given time are still present in some later period? We may be more interested in measuring the churn rate.
- Task Success: The number of complete actions is an important metric for a designer’s success. It includes factors such as the number of users that complete a particular task by the most accessible means possible. It also considers the error rate and time to complete a task.
How to Use the HEART Framework
- Setting Goals
We need to ensure that the entire design team is on common ground when it comes to understanding the goal to achieve. The overall goal influences all plans, including the ones to add new features. Asking the right questions is vital in this process. Questions such as what is the desired result – is it to attract new customers or increase engagement for existing users?
- Managing a list of metrics
Prepping and maintaining a proper list of possible metrics ensures the manageability of all metrics in one place and easy calculation of the success of the product.
Conclusion
Thus, a design’s success involves multiple fronts including customer satisfaction and the time involved in working and implementing the design without the hassle of additional costs and time overruns.
Google HEART Framework example
