Service Design Show by Service Design Show

October 10, 2024 A New Approach to Measuring Design's Impact / Stacey Barr / Ep. #212

This might be the most profound conversation I've recorded this year...

What if I told you that the puzzle of how to measure and quantify the value of design has already been solved?

I know, it sounds too good to be true, right? But hear me out.

We all struggle to express the value of design in metrics that businesses understand. The result?

We often cut ourselves short because we can't present the impact of our work in a neat spreadsheet. It's frustrating, especially when we see decisions being made that make no sense to us based on "our data".

There are many reasons why it's hard to quantify the return on investment of (service) design. We're creating value on a systemic level. We're doing it in co-creation, so attribution is a nightmare. The effects of our work sometimes take a long time to materialize. And the list goes on.

So, is all hope lost? Do we throw our hands up in the air? Of course not.

Recently, while researching better alternatives to hierarchical goal structures (which are inherently broken), I stumbled upon an article by Stacey Barr. I had never heard of Stacey or her work before. This discovery led me down a massive rabbit hole.

Stacey is a leading expert on performance measurement. Over the last 20 years, she has developed and refined a methodology to measure, track, and improve performance that's being used in over 40 countries.

The more I read about this methodology, the more I felt that this could be the breakthrough we've been looking for in the design field. I have to be careful not to raise expectations too high, but...

Stacey is an unusual guest for the Show. Someone who's completely outside of our design bubble. And that's why this turned out to be such an interesting and eye-opening conversation.

In this episode, you'll learn that there is a systemic and reliable approach to figuring out what and how you can measure the impact of design. You can take this approach and apply it to your work today! And best of all, as you'll hear, the approach builds upon a lot of the elements that we as a design community are already familiar with.

I hope this episode will show you that we can actually get to measuring the things that matter, not just the things that are easy to measure.

And maybe, even maybe, get you a little bit excited about measurement (yes, that's actually possible)!

A part that I really liked in our conversation is when we rolled up our sleeves, took an abstract goal like "increasing the sense of belonging," and went step-by-step on how to break this down into more concrete and quantifiable metrics. This exercise really brought things home for me.

Keep making a positive impact!

~ Marc

--- [ 1. GUIDE ] ---

00:00: Welcome to Episode 212

04:00: Marc's rant on KPIs

05:30: Who is Stacy

08:00: Measuring service design

09:30: Evidence and numbers

13:00: Circle example

16:00: Measuring qualitative aspects

18:00: Quantifying "sense of belonging"

21:00: Circle buddies and belonging