
Measuring UX with Google HEART Framework - tigranhakobian
https://uxplanet.org/how-to-effectively-measure-ux-with-google-heart-framework-4a497631d224
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unabst
There is this disturbing trend of mixing the service/product and the interface
and calling it "the experience". This is good for marketing maybe (of UX
designers probably), but when designing a product, you're actually making the
problem incredibly difficult. You're merging different problems into one, then
trying to find silver bullets. Hence, everyone reinvents the UI for a "unique"
UX. But that's the exact thing users do not want, and that makes everything
harder for everybody.

The UI needs to disappear. No one should even "see" it. The perfect interface
is still an invisible one. If you go with this principle, then once the UI
task is done, we've eliminated UI from UX. Your first task is to eliminate UI
from the UX problem.

What is left is the product/service in it's finest, purest, most concise form.
And now, as this is adjusted, the UI may need adjustment. But this is the
proper order of business.

Take the missing audio jack. Everybody notices it. Hence, this is an obvious
UX failure. The designer's "opinion" or "gut" is not more accurate or more
important than the user. UX is not about forcing experience. And the UI itself
is about non-experience. Just follow this principle, and the best UX will
follow.

Of course, even the data driven UX designers won't put the audio jack back
despite the "unhappiness". And that is what is most disturbing for me, at
least. It seems these UX designers have no principles. I sense arrogance and
apathy. But this makes sense if you consider a UI that wants to be noticed as
being self important, and a UI that is data driven to lack any personal or
emotional touch.

No single user is a general statistic. Basing design on statistics is not
design; it's giving up on designing; it's anti-design.

Anyway, I know HN is hardly the place to push POVs but I will keep trying.

~~~
astral303
Hear hear on anti-design! It is avoidance of design. Designing well is hard.
Easy escape route: metrics!

By the time you ship a design with these metrics, much like usability testing,
it is too late. You have just spent a bunch of time building and QAing
something to a shippable state, only to find out some major usability issue.
But the team thought they were almost done.

No single user is another great point. Complex software has multiple personas
(types of users) using it. They have different needs and sometimes they are
not served well. This HEART score needs to be at least segmented by persona to
start being useful.

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victor106
This article explains “what” the HEART framework is not “how” to measure it as
the title says

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tekkk
Google should use it for Google Analytics. That dashboard is terrible. A
beautiful, polished turd is how I often describe it.

Just as an example: try to add a new property to an analytics account. The
whole ABCD naming of the menus also bugs me, like really?

~~~
arkitaip
Why anyone would take UX advice from Google (or Facebook, Twitter, Amazon,
Microsoft) is beyond me. I have this rule that I don't take UX advice from
companies that have shitty/dark/manipulative UX.

~~~
goldenkey
Well..Facebook originally was utilitarian data dense UI..which didnt win in
all categories but appealed to me as the prickles person I am. The rest of
those names are terrible UI that say "Im unique and wizzy!!" far too
unsubtley.

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fnordsensei
Where do qualitative methods come into the conversation?

Data-driven UX is better than gut feeling alone, but it's certainly not a
replacement for qualitative studies. They complement each other very well. In
fact, when gut feeling is reinforced or produced by both qualitative and
quantitative studies, you're in a good spot.

If your (or better: the team's) intuition, deep interviews and data all point
in one direction, then it's very likely to be the right one. By my experience,
if you have support from two of the three sources
(intuition—quantitative—qualitative), it's often good enough to pick a
direction.

However, picking a direction based on the _same two_ sources for every
decision you make is not a good idea. The larger framework you employ should
include all of them, even if smaller decisions are based on an "incomplete"
perspective based on fewer information sources.

Processes based solely on quantitative measures lean towards being reactive.
You're viewing the future in the light of data from the past. Often, the past
is a reliable predictor of the future. Sometimes, crucially, it's not. And
sometimes, key behaviour is captured, but buried in the cheer volume of data.

Qualitative studies add a predictive element since you are able to capture
elements that you didn't think to measure for beforehand, or didn't think to
look for in the data. Once captured, those elements can sometimes be measured
quantitatively, possibly even retroactively.

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Naushad
I would love to apply this simple yet effective framework for a Non-Enterprise
application. The EAR of this hEARt has no significance in this equation.
Engagement for Enterprise Application is Forced, Enterprise execs Buy Products
and make the people under them live with it. Adoption: on similar lines to
Engagement. Retention: Enterprise, the retention is not to be questions, users
are locked-in till the time the application is paid for.

~~~
goldenkey
Well considering it spells out a pretty word, it was most likely contrived.
Yeah...

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ThomPete
There is only one way to measure UX IMO and that is conversion. Everything
else is just attempting at adding pseudo-certainty where none exist.

~~~
tobr
I don't know, that's like saying that the one way to measure quality of
journalism is by number of clicks.

Good UX should help conversion rate, but so might dark patterns, obnoxious
popups, lies, etc.

~~~
ThomPete
You can't measure the quality of journalism in any quantifiable way if not to
some quantifiable output.

Otherwise, it just becomes an art discussion which can be amusing but hardly
something you can build a business on.

~~~
tobr
I don't think you're talking about measuring UX. You're talking about
quantifying the business value of UX.

~~~
ThomPete
No I am talking about not being able to measure UX unless you can quantify it.
Otherwise it just becomes "what is art" discussion.

~~~
nailer
Yes but conversion isn't the only metric.

For a newspaper, you could also have whether users feel more informed, whether
they are more informed, etc.

~~~
ThomPete
Conversion is exactly the metric there and btw have little to do with UX in
this specific situation and everything to do with the quality of the content.

~~~
nailer
No it is not. You haven't provided supporting arguments, but I will anyway:
you can sell newspapers with sensation and lies. Look at PCC vs Guardian on
the Mark Duggan case.

