HEART Framework Template
Evaluate customer satisfaction and ensure that you are providing real value with the HEART Framework. Measure Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, and Task Success.
About the HEART Framework template
The HEART framework is a UX framework developed by Google. It turns the often-fuzzy idea of user experience into a set of measurable, actionable metrics, helping your product win new users and keep current active users loyal.
What is the HEART framework?
User experience teams often find it challenging to develop useful metrics for success. It’s an even greater challenge for teams at large companies. You can measure user experience at a small scale through user research, surveys, and focus groups. But as your company grows, your customer base gets too large for these methods to always be reasonable.
Google developed the HEART framework to tackle the problem of quantifying user experience. The HEART framework is a set of user-centered metrics you can use to measure user experience at any scale — then draw on those metrics repeatedly throughout the product development lifecycle.
What does HEART stand for?
HEART stands for Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, and Task Success.
Happiness is a subjective measure of attitude or satisfaction. It’s often quantified through user surveys and bolstered via case studies.
Engagement measures how much the user interacts willingly with a product. Depending on the product, it can be measured by your number of active users in a day, week, or month or your net promoter score (NPS).
Adoption is the rate of new users gained in each time period, usually monthly.
Retention measures how long each customer remains an active user before dropping off. Churn, the other side of the coin, measures how many active users go inactive each month.
Task Success is either the average time it takes a user to complete a task in your product or the percentage of tasks users successfully complete.
What are goals, signals, and metrics in HEART?
Goals, signals, and metrics are the core of the HEART process. All five areas of the HEART acronym must be connected to a goal, at least one signal, and at least one metric.
A goal is a statement of what you’d like your product to achieve in that area of HEART. It’s important for goals to be general, not defined by existing metrics. Some examples:
Happiness goal: “We want logging into our product to feel relaxing and supportive.”
Engagement goal: “We want users engaging with our app every day.”
Adoption goal: “We want our user base to grow continuously.”
Retention goal: “We want as little churn as possible.”
Task Success goal: “We want to minimize abandoned tasks across all user segments.”
Next, come up with one or more signals for each goal. Signals are signs you can look for to show you whether you’re on track to achieve your goal. Examples might be:
Happiness signals: Positive feedback from with real users, recommendations, few complaints.
Engagement signals: Large amount of user-generated content, users spending more time in the app, users logging in multiple times per day.
Adoption signals: More downloads, new features adopted quickly, paid features generating more revenue.
Retention signals: More subscription renewals, fewer users going inactive.
Task Success signals: Few abandoned tasks, few complaints about time-to-completion.
Finally, decide on metrics you can use to objectively measure each signal. For example:
Happiness metrics: Number of five-star reviews, NPS.
Engagement metrics: Daily/weekly/monthly active users.
Adoption metrics: New users per day/week/month, revenue from paid users.
Retention metrics: Retention rate, churn rate.
Task Success signals: Tasks completed per user, average completion time.
The HEART framework is not prescriptive. You’re free to come up with whatever goals, signals, and metrics make the most sense for your business and product.
How do you create a HEART model?
Start by selecting the HEART framework template. Then follow these steps:
Decide on your scope. Are you evaluating your whole product, certain features, or just one feature?
Get familiar with the template. The five areas are listed at the top of the table. Goals, signals, and metrics run down the left-hand side.
Fill out goals for each column. Brainstorm or with your team to settle on five goals.
Fill out signals. Signals can be either positive (something you want to see) or negative (something you’re on the right track if you don’t see).
Fill out metrics. Pick metrics you can use to quantify each signal.
Alternately, you might choose to come up with goals, signals, and metrics for each column before moving on to the next one. Either approach works!
Once finished, you can share your framework with your team or anyone else who would benefit from seeing the information by sending them the board link.
When should you use the HEART model?
The HEART model is generally used to measure larger scale projects, but it works for any size project or team. Use it whenever you want to ensure you’re making your customers happy and providing them with real value.
What are UX frameworks?
A UX framework is a set of assumptions and steps a team can use to build a user experience. UX frameworks such as HEART also monitor and refine user reactions to a product once it’s already out in the world.
What is a KPI in UX design?
A KPI, or key performance indicator, is a measurable variable a UX team can use to determine how their user interface is performing with customers. In the HEART framework, it’s called a metric. Examples include monthly active users and time to complete tasks.
What is UX tracking?
UX tracking is the act of using tools to follow how users interact with your product. It encompasses a wide range of technology, including website analytics, click-tracking, and A/B testing apps.
How do you use the HEART framework?
The easiest way is to use this free template. Alternatively, create a table and label one axis with Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, and Task Success. Label the other axis with Goals, Signals, and Metrics. Then, work with your UX team to fill in each cell.
Get started with this template right now.
Brainwriting Template
Works best for:
Education, Ideation, Brainstorming
Brainstorming is such a big part of ideation. But not everyone does their best work out loud and on the spot, yelling out thoughts and building on others’ ideas. Brainwriting is a brilliant solution for them—creative thinkers who happen to be more introverted. This approach and template invites participants to reflect quietly and write out their ideas, and then pass them to someone else who will read the idea and add to it. So you’ll get creative ideas from everyone—not just the loudest few.
Portfolio Template
Works best for:
Presentations, UX Design
The portfolio template is a way for you to showcase your best work in a visual manner. Think of your work portfolio as a way to present who you are as a professional and describe with more detail what you have achieved and what is your unique expertise. You will use a portfolio template as a way to market yourself to future employers when applying for jobs, universities, and training programs.
Empathy Map Trevotech
Works best for:
Market Research, Research & Design
Empathy Map Trevotech is a powerful tool for gaining insights into user experiences. It helps you capture and analyze user emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, ensuring your product designs meet user needs effectively.
SMART Goals Template
Works best for:
Prioritization, Strategic Planning, Project Management
Setting goals can be encouraging, but can also be overwhelming. It can be hard to conceptualize every step you need to take to achieve a goal, which makes it easy to set goals that are too broad or too much of a stretch. SMART is a framework that allows you to establish goals in a way that sets you up for success. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. If you keep these attributes in mind whenever you set goals, then you’ll ensure your objectives are clear and reachable. Your team can use the SMART model anytime you want to set goals. You can also use SMART whenever you want to reevaluate and refine those goals.
Team Charter Template
Works best for:
Meetings, Workshops, Team Meetings
A team charter is a document that outlines your team’s purpose and objectives, as well as steps you will take to reach your goals. The team charter illustrates the focus and direction for all team members. When created collaboratively, the team charter is a great way for individuals to feel even more connected to one another within the group. A team charter template is useful when you’re first establishing a new team, adding new members to an existing team, or when you need to better align regardless of your team’s tenure.
Define Your Product's Target Audience
Works best for:
Product Management, Planning
Too broad an audience? Or trying to target too many audiences? This is a certain path to product failure.