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Measuring product design impact — KPIs, NPS, UX, WTF
We Product Designers have a problem: we are creative souls.
Being creative souls puts Product Designers in a precarious position. Business tends to not be creative, and yet here we are: Product Designers, working for a business. What are we doing here? How do we justify our existence? How do we find meaning in what we’re doing? Not in an existential “why am I here on this earth” kind of way, but in a “how does my work truly benefit the business” kind of way.
As creative souls, we approach our work with a certain level of personal attachment, where we have a tendency to put a part of ourselves into every project we touch. It’s this personal attachment that is both our strength and our weakness. On one hand, by connecting ourselves (our emotions, our aesthetic sensibilities, our personal opinions) to our work, we impassion it and make it special in some way. This gives us a reason to remain excited, so we can keep coming back to our designs day in and day out. On the other hand, by creating a personal attachment to our work, it makes us that much more resistant to criticism, change, and starting over, and also inhibits us from seeking out ways to better our work so it performs better. And, at the end of the day, we do want to be in it for the creativity (or at least some part of us does). So what’s all this about performance?
Performance, to be blunt, is very much the purpose of having Product Designers on staff — to help build digital products which perform better for the company. That’s why we’re here. The business depends, in part, on Product Design to imagine, create, and ship highly-performant work to (wait for it) make the business money.
Yes, that’s right. We sold out. It (whatever “it” is) is not solely about the creativity, it’s about the money. Put on your big boy (or big girl) pants and accept it. There are numerous digital products and experiences that have been built, and are yet to be built, which have found massive success despite having no brilliant Product Designers, let alone any Product Designers, on staff. So, in a way, a product doesn’t need a Product Designer to succeed. And yet, as one of very few brilliant Product Designers on earth (and that shirt looks great on you, by the way), you do have something special about you, and you do add…
