You are what you measure

It’s the mid 90s and you’re a teenager, broke and living on the streets of San Diego trying to make it as a musician. You’ve been living out of home since 15, thousands of miles away from your family, an abusive father and you shoplift to get by.

You catch a break when you are accidentally discovered performing at a local cafe and the bidding war for your talent lands an offer: one million dollars in advance.

You turn it down.

Crazy? This was the decision Jewel made at the age of 19. Who would pass up a million dollars while living tough and more importantly - how and why?

Jewel’s measure of success

Many of us want to be successful - to have a sense of purpose, belonging and a sense of contentment. However the way we measure these values ultimately define who we are and the decisions we make.

In Jewel’s case, she measured success by her happiness and more importantly that she wanted to be an artist more than she wanted to be famous.

The ability to turn down a large sum of money is difficult in the best circumstances, let alone as a struggling artist. However, by turning down the advance (it’s like a loan), Jewel eliminated the pressure of needing to succeed immediately which went against her values and her success metrics.

Still, easier said than done, especially as a folk singer-songwriter at the height of grunge.

Jewel would go on to sale over 15 million copies of her first album ‘Piece of You’ and her big back end deal still made her exceedingly wealthy.

This story I found captures the power of choosing the right metrics for success and using it to make important decisions.

The importance of correct metrics

In Luke Wroblewski’s Mind The Gap, he stresses the importance of finding the right metrics.

For instance, if you measures success by the number of newsletters sign up as a business, it’s no surprise when your website becomes quickly filled with invasive pop ups that remind visitors to sign up.

When this metric becomes prioritised over user outcomes, it does little to make life easier for the user and certainly creates more barriers between reaching their goals and using your product.

“Usually this boils down to one simple thing - long term user-centred metrics over short term operational and more transactional metrics.”

Luke Wroblewski - Mind The Gap

Jared Spool, another expert in this field reminds us of the risk when we accept certain metrics at the surface level. This problem can be compounded by out-of-the-box analytic tools that report on inference, rather than actual observed behaviour.

Take for instance, conversion. The success of product sales is often measured by conversion - how many users purchase vs the number of visitors.

What conversion doesn’t measure, however, are the portion of purchases that don’t meet user needs, and how many users who didn’t convert missed out on something that would benefit their lives.

In this case, the output (conversion metric) doesn’t map accurately to the strategic outcome (meeting user needs).

Outcomes, stories, metrics and executives

When we design a successful product, we see a positive change in the world.

“A UX outcome is the change we see in the world because we’ve done a great job implementing our design.”

Jared Spool - The Challenge of Identifying UX Success Metrics

As designers it can be easy to tell this story to our stakeholders because it’s emotive and focuses on problems or pain points we can empathise with.

When we want attention of executives, however, we often will need to communicate this problem in a way they understand - trackable metrics or analytics.

So our ultimate challenge is two-fold. Firstly, we need to correctly identify the right metrics for the outcomes you want to drive, and then present it to decision makers in a compelling narrative which amplifies the emotions of the change. If done successfully, we can expect to create organisational impact at scale.

Easy, right? Just like turning down a million dollars in the 90s!

Thanks for reading!