Increase the quality of your UX with the Google HEART Framework
The user behavior of your target group is the most important source of information for you. This is how you improve the user experience (UX) of your digital products.
Google HEART Metrics: Measuring User Experience on a Large Scale
For the further development of your application, it is important to continuously analyze user behavior and collect user feedback. In addition, your designers track UX metrics such as load time, app crashes, and the number of daily active users. This already provides valuable information for an effective user experience. But: in order to make more targeted, data-driven decisions tailored to the UX in the product development process, your UX experts need more data.
That's exactly the problem that Google Research Team members took on. Kerry Rodden, Hilary Hutchinson and Xin Fiu collaborated to develop a user-centric framework - the Google HEART Framework. Their goal: to use large-scale measurements to obtain insightful data about the quality of user experience and the impact of UX changes. Originally developed for web apps, you can furthermore apply the framework to any digital product. In fact, it can even be broken down to small products like landing pages or templates - so you can use the Google HEART Framework to define intuitive user experiences down to the smallest detail!
Web apps, landing pages or templates - Google HEART Framework can be used in many ways
The Google HEART Framework consists of a total of five categories: Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, and Task Success. In addition, the framework includes Goals, Signals, and Metrics for each category. With Google HEART metrics, you measure the behavior of your users in the product. And for the evaluation of the behavior you define different signals. This tells you whether and how successfully you are achieving your goals in the respective categories.
Happiness: How many feelings of happiness can you inspire in your users?
Wondering what your users think about your product, offer or service? Then you have reason to be happy! Because the Happiness category measures the emotions of your users about your product on the basis of user surveys. Important criteria here are the UX metrics satisfaction, user-friendliness and the Net Promoter Score.
Example: After a user has purchased a product from your online store, you ask them to rate the purchase process. If you receive a 5-star rating, your user found the shopping experience very pleasant - he is "happy". The fewer stars your user leaves you here, the sooner you should optimize your product in terms of happiness.
Engagement: Using Google HEART Metrics to Determine Commitment of Your Product
Do you actually know how often your users return to your app to use your product? This is answered by the engagement category: Here you record how often people interact with your product. The decisive criteria here are the regularity and intensity as well as the overall level of interaction over a certain period of time - for example, a week, a month, or a year.
Depending on the product you're measuring UX for, the interaction rate is a telling factor. Important at this point: find out why your users are using your product in the first place. For example, if it's an enterprise system, users are interacting with your product because of their work. In this case, the interaction rate is independent of the individual user's interest - and ultimately provides you with little meaningful data. Additionally, you should interpret the data of your products individually. After all, users are likely to open their email app more often than their weather app.
Adoption: Measuring User Experience for Successful Customer Acquisition
Do you have an overview of how many of your potential users actually complete the onboarding process and become returning users? Using the Adoption category, you measure the user experience by the number of new users over a certain period of time - and thus also by how many users actually use your product. In this way, you find out how successful your company is currently in attracting new customers.
You may be wondering if the Adoption category refers to Sales and Marketing rather than User Experience. The answer is no. It's true that heavy investments in sales and marketing can temporarily mask UX problems. But a poor user experience has a long-term demotivating effect on users. If the new marketing campaign is ingenious, you may attract attention. But if potential users discuss the product with those around them or read bad reviews on the Internet, neither the best marketing strategy nor the greatest sales talent will benefit your company in the long run. Instead, a positive user experience with regard to adoption strengthens your brand growth in the long term!
Retention: Google HEART metrics give you insights into customer loyalty to your product
What do you think: What percentage of your users use your product again and again? The retention category provides you with a precise statement about this. You can use it to find out at which point in the user journey most users drop out. And you can then target the UX problems that led to this drop-off. In this way, your users stay in your digital product for a certain period of time - or even indefinitely in the case of long-lived products.
The categories Retention and Adoption with their UX metrics are particularly helpful for the roll-out of new releases or significant changes in the functionality of features: The data obtained in this way shows you directly whether your new product is well received or whether there are still weak points - and what they are.
Goals Signals Metrics: How to use the Google HEART Framework right
Based on the HEART categories, you define your goals in the framework. For instance, what you want your customer to tweet after using your product: How easy is the app to use? That falls into the Task Success category. Or how much they enjoyed using the app? Here, you're targeting the Happiness category. Additionally, you define signals. You then use special Google HEART metrics to track whether and to what extent you are approaching your goals.
Step 1: Set your goals
In the first step, you should define the goals you want to achieve with the Google HEART Framework together with your team. Important here: Limit yourself to three core goals! Because when it comes to measuring user experience, less is more.
Is your main goal to attract new users? Or do you want to increase the interaction of existing users with your product? Or maybe both? While you're defining your goals, you should also be thinking about the UX optimizations that will help you successfully lead your users to those goals.
Step 2: Define your signals
Each goal is linked to desired user actions. That's why the next step is to define desired and undesired behaviors of your users. These behaviors imply whether you are achieving or missing your goal and are called signals. Define only those signals that are unaffected by changes in your UX design - for example, adjustments to the font or the main color.
Your goal is to increase interaction? If your users spend more time consuming content you provide, this behavior could be a signal of increased interaction.
Step 3: Select the appropriate metrics
You check how successful you are in achieving your goals using trackable UX metrics. You derive these from the signals. For example, you can use a Net Promoter Score to measure how satisfied your users are with your product - keyword: Happiness. An informative metric in the adoption category, for example, is the registration rate. But be careful: Not all metrics are necessarily to be used for every (sub-)project - a precise, upstream objective is necessary here.
Conclusion: Measuring User Experience - Google HEART Framework sets the bar higher
Overall, the Google HEART Framework tells you how and why users interact with your digital product in the first place. The categories Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention and Task Success provide you with valuable data. What's special: The more detailed measurements give you very insightful details about the user experience of your product. This gives you a better understanding of your target group's behavior and allows you to respond to it in a targeted manner. In this way, you ensure an all-round positive experience - and convince your users of your digital product in the long term.