The ability to measure user experience is complex, yet supremely important. While most companies have north-start user behavior goals and product adoption metrics that help them analyze different user experience-related initiatives, many teams struggle to understand the answer to a simple question: do we deliver a frictionless experience for our users?
Google understood the need to better track and measure user experience in relation to larger product goals and business outcomes, which resulted in the creation of the HEART UX framework in the early 2010s. The HEART framework provided Google’s product team with an objective way of assessing the quality of user experience from a holistic perspective. Over 10 years later, Google still utilizes the HEART framework as a guiding exercise in optimizing its UX.
In this guide, we’ll define the HEART framework and give concrete action items for utilizing it to understand the level at which you’re providing your users with an exceptional experience. We’ll also provide you a template to help your take on your first HEART UX exercise.
What Is the HEART Framework?
The HEART framework provides product teams with a simple, effective way to examine their user experience holistically. By examining each element of the framework, product teams can get a 360-degree view of the quality of their UX in an objective, data-based way.
HEART is an acronym, with each letter representing a different aspect of the user experience:
- Happiness
- Engagement
- Adoption
- Retention
- Task Success
Within the HEART framework, each aspect of UX is evaluated according to specific metrics so that product managers can assess overall quality in a data-driven way that limits internal biases.
The History of the HEART Framework
Kerry Rodden, a lead UX Researcher at Google, began to realize that although product teams meticulously measured the success of each product operations initiative according to data, the overall user experience was looked at subjectively. The running assumption was that as long as the team was testing iterations and choosing winning variants, all was well—but Rodden was skeptical.
Even if users could accomplish specific tasks and core product KPIs were relatively healthy, how did they know that users who logged on to Google’s various products had a positive overall experience? Rodden understood that looking at UX more holistically could inform their product strategy and created the HEART framework.
As with many internal processes at Google, the HEART framework didn’t take long to catch on in UX research and product development. Let’s explore the HEART framework so you and your team can benefit.
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How Does the HEART Framework Work?
Let’s look at each element of the HEART framework in more detail below:
- Happiness: To what extent do users enjoy using your product?
- Engagement: Do users utilize your platform’s functionality often and to its full extent?
- Adoption: Are new users quick to understand and utilize the breadth of tools and features you offer?
- Retention: Do users keep returning to the platform to use key features and flows?
- Task Success: Do users easily accomplish their goals within the platform?
Positive answers to these questions show a holistically healthy UX, which every product team should strive for. However, since determining the status of each aspect of the HEART framework is far from intuitive, the framework utilizes goals, signals, and metrics to help get a complete picture.
- Goals: These are relatively broad objectives for each HEART element defined by your product team. An example might be, “Get new users to adopt X key flow faster” for adoption.
- Signals: Here, your team defines specific indicators that you’re moving closer to your overall goal. Going with the same example, a signal that new users are adopting your target key flow faster might be that new users are spending more time in that platform area.
- Metrics: These are specific data points that determine whether you have succeeded or failed in each area of the framework. With our example, a metric might be: % of new users who complete X key flow within a week of creating their account. Using product analytics tools like Whatfix Product Analytics, you can easily track the key data points your team defines using the HEART framework.
By using goals, signals, and metrics, your team can fully adopt the HEART framework to measure and iterate on your overall user experience.
Let’s examine more examples to become more comfortable with the framework and its application.
Goals | Signals | Success | |
Happiness | Users enjoy using the platform and find it to be smooth and intuitive |
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Engagement | Users consistently and repeatedly use flows and features within the platform |
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Adoption | New users see the value in key features and flows |
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Retention | Users consistently come back to the platform |
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Task Success | Users do the primary tasks within the platform efficiently and to completion |
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Benefits of the HEART Framework
Utilizing the HEART framework gives product teams a lot of tangible value. Let’s examine some of the framework’s primary benefits in depth.
1. Provides a holistic analysis of user experience
While most product teams monitor many business and user behavior metrics, they’re often looked at in isolation. For example, suppose you release a feature iteration as an A/B test and see that one variant yields a lower conversion rate. In that case, your team will likely try to answer the question: why don’t users convert with the losing variant?
That’s all well and good, but the issue is that conversion is only one indicator of a healthy user experience. When you start to pull together metrics from the full scope of the HEART framework, your team answers specific questions and begins to understand the entire picture.
In our example, if the conversion rate is down, but task and flow completion rates are up, and user satisfaction metrics are positive, the product team can have a much more informed conversation about what they’ve built and how to move forward.
2. Enables product teams to create user-centric goals
Since the HEART framework is designed to help product teams get a clear picture of the user experience, it naturally leads teams to choose goals that serve the user. We already know that when we deliver a robust user experience, we almost always reap the benefits as a product-led growth company. The framework ensures that users don’t look at business KPIs in isolation but understand them in the context of how users move through the platform.
For example, even a product iteration with a high conversion rate might have to be balanced with a lower flow completion rate. In that case, the team might go ahead with the iteration but set the goal of removing user friction that hinders process completion to improve the overall user experience.
3. Clear prioritization of product improvements
For product professionals, prioritizing endless lists of potential platform improvements is a necessary but often daunting task that never ends. The HEART framework helps product teams prioritize by giving visibility to each aspect of the user experience and clarifying where the most work needs to be done.
For example, if the metrics you’re using to measure the health of your user retention are low, but the other areas within the framework are closer to where you’d like, you’ll know to prioritize updates and improvements in your product roadmap tailored towards improving user retention.
4. Data-driven product decisions
How many of us have sat in product syncs and debated the quality of our user experience with our colleagues? Though fun and lively, these cyclical debates are often inefficient.
The HEART framework gives product teams a way to show each potential or current product initiative in a holistic, data-driven way. Not only are there data points, but they’re organized objectively and give equal attention to all aspects of the user experience.
HEART Framework Template
Enable your product team to take a HEART framework-approach to user experience design with our free template below:
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HEART framework template!
HEART framework template!
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key metrics you define for each framework element. With Whatfix Product Analytics, you can track, analyze, and define action items related to user behavior. Use user journeys, funnel analysis, trend insights, and cohort-specific metrics to fuel your success with the HEART framework.
Once you and your team have defined and are tracking the relevant metrics within the HEART framework, you’ll want to ensure you have a plan of action.
With the no-code Whatfix Digital Adoption Platform (DAP), anyone on your product team can quickly react to what you see in the data. With the Whatfix DAP, you can help users where they’re dropping off, decrease the amount of time that it takes users to get value from your platform, guide users to experience value with different features, provide contextual assistance at key friction points, and a whole lot more with:
- Product tours
- Interactive walkthroughs
- Task lists
- Tooltips and beacons
- In-app resource centers
All of that without ever writing a line of code! Are you ready to start monitoring your HEART framework metrics and implementing quick, user-facing solutions to your user experience issues?
What Is Whatfix?
Whatfix is a digital adoption platform that provides organizations with a no-code editor to create in-app guidance on any application that looks 100% native. With Whatfix, create interactive walkthroughs, product tours, task lists, smart tips, field validation, self-help wikis, hotspots, and more. Understand how users are engaging with your applications with advanced product analytics.
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