As a product designer, you need to demonstrate the value and impact of your work to your clients, stakeholders, and potential employers. But how do you prove the success of your product design projects? In this article, we'll share some tips and best practices on how to measure, communicate, and showcase your product design outcomes.
Before you start any product design project, you need to define what success looks like for you and your users. This means setting clear and measurable goals, objectives, and key results (OKRs) that align with the problem statement, user needs, and business strategy. You can use tools like SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) or HEART (Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, and Task Success) frameworks to help you create meaningful and actionable success criteria.
In my experience, the success of any product is closely tied to customer satisfaction. Therefore, continuously gathering feedback from end users and delivering updated product versions tailored to their needs can extend the product's lifecycle and enhance its productivity indicators.
Use metrics that are easy to understood. Customer Effort Score for example is a solid standard approach to measure in-app if a flow is easy to complete. Measure continuously to track improvements.
Once you have your success criteria, you need to collect and analyze data that shows how well your product design meets them. You can use both quantitative and qualitative methods to gather feedback and insights from your users, such as surveys, interviews, usability tests, analytics, A/B tests, and user reviews. You should also track and compare your product design performance against your baseline metrics, benchmarks, and competitors. Data analysis helps you validate your assumptions, identify strengths and weaknesses, and discover opportunities for improvement.
Data alone is not enough to prove the success of your product design projects. You also need to communicate your results effectively to your audience, whether it's your client, stakeholder, or employer. You should tailor your message and format to suit their needs, expectations, and preferences. For example, you can use dashboards, reports, presentations, or stories to convey your key findings, insights, and recommendations. You should also highlight the impact and value of your product design on the user experience, customer satisfaction, and business outcomes.
Connect your metrics to user outcomes and business outcomes. For example: a lower effort score in a flow might reduce user’s time to value or onboarding time in a SaaS product. This may be possible to correlate with active usage metrics and these should correlate to retention.
Your portfolio is your best tool to showcase the success of your product design projects. It's not only a collection of your work samples, but also a reflection of your skills, process, and personality. You should include relevant and diverse projects that demonstrate your ability to solve problems, create solutions, and deliver results. You should also provide context and evidence for each project, such as the problem statement, user research, design process, success criteria, data analysis, and results. Your portfolio should tell a compelling story of how you approach, execute, and evaluate your product design projects.
Proving the success of your product design projects is not a one-time activity, but a continuous process of learning and improvement. You should always seek feedback and suggestions from your users, clients, stakeholders, and peers on how to enhance your product design skills, methods, and outcomes. You should also reflect on your own strengths and weaknesses, and identify areas for growth and development. You should also keep up with the latest trends, best practices, and tools in the product design field, and apply them to your future projects.
Last but not least, you should celebrate your achievements and recognize your efforts for proving the success of your product design projects. You should be proud of your work and share it with your network, community, and industry. You should also appreciate the challenges and opportunities that each project brings, and how they help you grow as a product designer. You should also acknowledge the contributions and support of your team, collaborators, and mentors, and thank them for their help and feedback. Celebrating your achievements helps you boost your confidence, motivation, and reputation as a product designer.