Framework for Measuring Design Team’s Success

When external stakeholders think of the design team, they picture wireframes, workshops, usability testing, and beautiful interfaces. Now this may seem a bit surprising, but most design leaders that I have seen have the same view about their teams. This view only gets trickled upwards.

What goes unrecognized is the engine of the design team and how it creates value: how the teams work, how the work happens, and how that work creates value for the business. This is why measuring processes and outcomes is important for the design team’s positive growth.

Case Study: Building a framework of design measurement for a large Canadian Enterprise

If someone looked at our design team from outside, our team would seem to be thriving. We were delivering good designs and receiving positive feedback. But we wanted more than good. We wanted to ensure our processes were efficient, our team was growing, and our work was creating tangible business impact.

We took a step back and decided to define success for ourselves. What does good look like—not just for our deliverables, but for our culture, our processes, and the outcomes we influence? Here’s how we approached it.

1. How the Team Works Together

A team is more than the sum of its parts. For us, the starting point was the people. We looked inward and asked, What makes our team tick? We realized that fostering collaboration and growth wasn’t just nice to have—it was essential for delivering great work.

So, we started measuring things like:

• Knowledge sharing: Are people contributing to wikis, hosting Lunch & Learn sessions, and participating in Communities of Practice (COPs)?
• Collaboration: How often do team members seek peer reviews, co-create solutions, or attend cross-functional workshops?
• Happiness and growth: Do people feel they’re growing in their roles? Are they excited about their work? Regular pulse surveys and check-ins helped us keep tabs on this.

These became the foundations of our ability to do great work. A happy, collaborative team doesn’t just get along; it produces better outcomes.

2. How the Work Gets Done

Once we focused on the who, we focused on the how. What did our workflows look like? Were we efficient, and were we setting ourselves up for success?

We noticed a few key areas to improve:

• Design systems: Were we making the most of our design system, or were people reinventing the wheel? We tracked component reuse rates and the time saved using established libraries.
• Handover quality: We asked our engineering partners: Are our handovers detailed and consistent enough to minimize friction during development?
• Access to knowledge: Can designers quickly find past projects, research, or metrics? Time wasted searching for resources is time not spent productively.

We also needed to understand how well we were working with external partners. Were product managers involved with us early in planning? Did marketing see us as partners, not just a production team? Feedback surveys and stakeholder engagement metrics helped us answer these questions.

3. How the Work Creates Business Impact

Finally, we zoomed out to ask the big question: Is our work moving the needle? It wasn’t enough to deliver designs—we wanted to prove their impact on the product and, ultimately, the business.

Here’s how we framed it:

• UX metrics: Things like task completion rates, time on task, and user satisfaction told us whether our designs were hitting the mark.
• Product metrics: These UX improvements often cascaded into higher retention, better conversion rates, or fewer support tickets.
• Business outcomes: When the product performs better, so does the business. We tracked metrics like revenue growth, cost savings, and customer loyalty to connect the dots.

Turning Metrics into Momentum

This wasn’t just an exercise in reporting. By aligning our efforts with measurable outcomes, we gained a clearer picture of what success looked like—not just for our team but for the organization as a whole.

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Resources and further reads:

• The structure of this framework was inspired by NNg’s Design Ops Landscape, which serves as a brilliant foundation for understanding a design team’s function: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/design-operations-101
• Also, inspired by this great interview with Daniel Burka: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeE6Tx_nO94
• A great resource that helped us guide and create cascading metrics: https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-design/our-insights/the-business-value-of-design

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This blog was also published in Bootcamp.