Designing to outcomes
This article is about designing to outcomes, a broad topic, I’ve written it from my experience at the digital coalface. I’ve included some of my thoughts from my recent talk at Camp Digital 2022.
We’ll cover:
- Why designing to outcomes is important
- What can happen if you’re not designing to outcomes
- How finding users’ frustrations on your current experience is a good way to start designing to outcomes
- Practical approaches to how you could become more outcome-focused
To begin, let’s create a shared understanding of the terms outcomes and outputs:
Outcome
The Cambridge dictionary says an outcome is:
“A result or effect of an action, situation, etc”
Something we do that results in a change in the world. I like how Joshua Seiden defines it, he’s written books about outcomes so knows a thing or two about them.
He defines an outcome as:
“A measurable change in behaviour that drives business results”
Outcome example
If we think about a very simple example, let’s imagine we have an online form where we want users to sign-up for our service.
Our user is answering the questions on the form, entering their data and flying through it, step by step. They get to a section where they have to enter their date of birth, which they do and then click the ‘next’ button.
They trigger an error message that informs them that they have entered the date of birth in the wrong format. This frustrates the user as the form didn’t tell them what format to enter their date of birth and still doesn’t.
In this example the simple measurable change in behaviour we’re looking for is users will enter the correct date of birth format on the form. That’s the outcome we want for our users to this specific problem within the form.
Telling the user what the correct date of birth format is could form our hypothesis and we could test adding labels for day, month and year.
With this change in behaviour in mind, we could further improve it by adding an example of the correct format above the inputs.
We should be clear what benefits the outcome drives for the business. In this case it helps users complete the form and sign up for our service, helping drive revenue.
Another benefit could be to the brand, users were leaving the form frustrated on the date of birth step, having a poor experience with the brand.
Output
Next lets have a look at what an output is, going from the Cambridge dictionary again, they define an output as:
“An amount of something produced by a person, machine, factory, country, etc”
It’s the things we produce, they can be pretty much anything!
Output example
If we apply outputs to design, they might be:
- Sketches we sketch, the wireframes we create
- Research we do with our users
- The designs and code we release
In our form example, some of the outputs could be the copy on our form, the date of birth inputs and the error validation messages.
To delve deeper Josh has a good story that explains what outcomes and outputs are and the difference between the two. Watch Joshua’s story about outcomes and outputs.
What can happen when we’re not designing to outcomes
With a shared understanding of what an outcome and output is, let’s move on to what can happen when we’re not designing to outcomes.
When we’re not designing to outcomes:
- We’re not focused on our users problems and behaviours we want to change.
- We might be designing features and building solutions that add no real value or solve problems our users don’t care about.
- Because we’re not focused on outcomes we might be measuring success with the wrong metrics for the things we deliver.
- The pace of delivery can get more of an emphasis, we start to ask the question, “how do we do more?”.
These are things that can make design, product teams and experiences less effective. They can lead to teams wasting time papering over cracks, creating solutions that add more layers of complexity to a service.
This added complexity and lack of focus on users can impact the bottom line for the business because they might get frustrated and go elsewhere.
Setting Outcomes on your experience
I do think outcomes can help with the problems a sole focus on outputs can bring. Let’s look at Joshuas definition of an outcome again and then apply that to users on your experience:
“A measurable change in behaviour that will drive our business results”
We can focus on the user problems we’re trying to solve, the improvements can be the measurable change in behaviour we’re looking for.
The improvement can be big or small but we should have clarity of what the outcome will be and what the measurable change is for the user.
I like how Joshuas definition makes us think how the outcome drives business results. Even if the outcome at its simplest level is making it easier for a user to do something and less likely to go elsewhere.
Designing to outcomes, forces us to become more user centred whilst at the same time understand the benefit it brings our business/org as well.
Users’ frustrations
Over time I’ve learnt it’s very likely users are experiencing frustrations on your current experience right now.
We live in a world where users value simplicity, transparency, support and want to be empowered. We should realise that users might put up with a poor experience if their need is greater but we should ask the question “for how long”?
We don’t want users going elsewhere so finding where users have problems and frustrations on your experience is important.
An opportunity to design to outcomes
I think solving problems and removing frustrations for users is a ready made opportunity to design to outcomes.
Because we have clarity of a change we want to make in the world ‘the problem for the user’, we can focus the outcome on removing the frustration for them.
As I said this is why we have to get better at finding users problems on our services, this is a practical way we can start designing to outcomes.
6 Tips from the digital coalface
Here are some tips to help you become more outcome-focused from my experience at the digital coalface.
1. Speak to your users more than you are now
I’ve had more success finding frustrations by speaking to users who were accessing the current experience and doing this on a regular basis.
I’ve found regular qualitative research with users over time will normally bring up problems on your service.
Recently at Auto Trader we’ve been intercepting users on our platform using GetFeedback to set up interviews. It’s been an easy way to get direct access to our users, quickly in their natural environment.
Then with UserZoom we can hold a moderated interview to observe how they use our services and understand frustrations they may have.
From doing this we’ve found problems they’re encountering, these are things we’re addressing and have on our roadmap now.
There are lots of ways to do research with your users and you’re probably not doing enough. So practical tip one for designing to outcomes is to try and speak to your users more than what you are at the minute!
2. Start with qualitative research, then quantitative
Regular qualitative research with users is a good place to start, there are exceptions but in general this has worked better for me.
Starting off with qualitative can give us a better understanding of our users needs and problems they might be having.
Then the quantitative research can tell us how big the problem is, doing both will help designing to outcomes. In the long run it can save you save time and money as well.
3. Define your outcome up-front
OK so you’ve been doing research with your users, you’ve found a frustration for them on your service.
Your data backs the problem up, you think it’s an issue you need to solve.
To set an outcome, you should be able to clearly state what the problem is for your users. Jared Spool says a UX outcome should answer this question, “If we do a good job, how do we improve someones life?”.
We should have measurable change in behaviour, the outcome we’re looking to achieve.
We should also understand how this impacts the business, the outcome should be contributing to driving business results.
Having clarity on these things lets you set a meaningful outcome.
4. Agree what will happen when you achieve your outcome and how to measure it
If we design to outcomes we have a change in the world we want to see.
As we said before the change can be big or small but it should be something we can measure. It’s common and too easy to sometimes jump into the analytics we use to measure something’s success.
Take time to think about how you can measure your outcome, don’t just rely on the analytics, what user experience measures can you add?
If this is a problem that’s coming up with your users in research, this should stop coming up in future research.
Can you time how long a task takes with a user, or how many interactions something gets, think about the measurements and get creative with them.
Being clear on when you achieve your outcome is key. You shouldn’t be designing to outcomes without knowing when you will achieve them and without setting up your measurements of success.
5. Don’t work in a silo, bring your colleagues in
A famous Muhammad Ali poem was “Me, we” he meant we are stronger together.
Designing to outcomes requires collaboration, bringing colleagues into the design process is important. Try to get colleagues involved in your research, make time for it and let them see users frustrations first hand.
At Auto Trader we include product, tech, delivery in research, we’re a collaborative bunch. Understanding those problems up close gets colleagues more invested in solving them.
Workshops get colleagues together, if you’ve done research with your users to frame the problem, you can ideate solutions together.
6. It’s OK to do output to build confidence but look for opportunities
Don’t worry about doing outputs to build confidence internally within your org/business.
If the pace of delivery and delivering more output is a priority then do that. But you should be on the lookout for opportunities to design to outcomes.
When you do and have success, shout about it. Show and tells are are good way as a team to communicate the process and success you’ve had.
I’ve also found A/B testing and experimentation is an effective way to build momentum and learn at the same time. The key thing is to look out for opportunities.
Summary
- When you're not designing to outcomes you’re just doing outputs and this will be costing time and money, even if it’s not being measured.
- If you’re not focused on outcomes you can start to lose touch with your users and their experience on your service.
- Get started with designing to outcomes by speaking to your users on your current experience to find and fix frustrations they might have.
- Be on the look out for opportunities to design to outcomes.
- Bring colleagues into the design process, designing to outcomes are more likely to happen when you work as a team.
Resources
Outcomes over output by Joshua Seiden
Leaders of awesomeness leaders.centercentre.com
