Design is creative work. It involves imagination and creating something out of nothing. Designers are creative people who invest a little bit of themselves into their work—their output is often personal.
For such work, it might seem odd to set numerical goals. ‘Create 10 banners each day’ or ‘improve website aesthetics’ don’t mean much. Yet, to track progress, measure performance, and support team members, the right goals are necessary.
This is where the objectives and key results (OKR) framework can help. Let’s see how. But first, some context.
Design OKRs Examples to Reach Your Design Goals
Summarize this article for me pleaseUnderstanding OKRs in Design
OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results. It outlines what design teams need to achieve and how performance can be measured. Here’s a simple example.
- Objective: Improve customer experience on the website
- Key results: Increase time on site or reduce cart abandonment rate
Why do design teams need OKRs?
Given that design is creative work, often teams focus on ensuring that it meets basic standards of customer experience, accessibility, etc. However, that is just the beginning. Good OKRs can offer a lot more benefits, such as:
Alignment with business goals: In commercial projects, good design must serve the business. OKRs help creative teams align their efforts toward business goals.
Clarity: Creative decisions are hard to make. For instance, how does a design team decide whether to change the color palette or not? OKRs help clarify these decisions. For instance, if the OKR is to increase user interactions, design teams would run A/B tests on different color palettes and choose the one that meets the goal.
Seamless collaboration: When there is a disagreement, design teams can use OKRs as a way to anchor their decisions. OKRs ensure that the entire team is on the same page and are working toward common goals. They ensure that the design workflows move quickly and efficiently.
Outcome orientation: Creative teams often fall into the trap of decision paralysis, working through multiple iterations and versions, delaying launch. OKRs give designers a decision framework, directing their focus on business outcomes.
Bonus: If you’re struggling to differentiate objectives, key results, and key performance indicators, read more about OKRs vs. KPIs.
Beyond the operational outcomes, design OKRs also play an important role in improving productivity and brand awareness.
Summarize this article for me pleaseImpact of Design OKRs on Productivity and Brand Awareness
The entire design team’s understanding of objectives and key results has an extraordinary impact on their productivity. Here’s how.
- OKRs spotlight the direction in which the team needs to travel, eliminating distractions
- It helps prioritize the more impactful design deliverables, improving the effectiveness of the team’s work
- It minimizes efforts on non-essential activities, eliminating productivity wastage
- It gives the entire team the same goal and the same language, dramatically improving their collective productivity
Equally important is the way OKRs shape brand awareness. The design team is the custodian of an organization’s visual brand. They are responsible for presenting the brand clearly, attractively, and consistently. OKRs ensure this.
OKRs boost brand awareness by aligning marketing and design efforts with the company’s strategic goals. For instance, if the goal is to ensure 100% brand consistency, the design team would build branding templates for the organization to use.
If you’re thinking: all that’s great, but how do we actually create OKRs for designers in an organization, you’re in the right place!
Summarize this article for me pleaseDesign OKR Examples
Like any objectives and key results framework, the goal setting needs to begin at the top. The company leadership needs to set objectives and pass them down to each department, including design. Here are some OKR examples of how design leaders can adapt organizational objectives for their teams.
1. OKR for user experience design
User experience (UX) is a function of several factors, such as usability, functionality, interactivity, accessibility, etc. You can set OKRs for each of these factors. If you’re new to this, you can start with a generic one, like the example below.
Objective: Improve user experience on the mobile app
Key results:
- Increase user satisfaction rating from 3.5 to 4.5 stars
- Reduce the average time to complete a purchase by 30%
- Achieve a task success rate of 90% for all primary user flows
- Decrease customer support tickets related to navigation issues by 50%
- Increase visual appeal rating by 30%
2. OKR for brand consistency
Every design team, be it graphic design, interaction design, or user interface (UI) design, strives to give a consistent visual identity to the brand. It is a critical aspect of a company’s brand management strategy. While it is a part of marketing OKRs, it can also be a design team OKR.
Objective: Improve branding consistency
Key results:
- Audit all collateral and identify inconsistent branding
- Reduce inconsistencies to less than 5% of collaterals
- Conduct brand design workshops for everyone working on communications, such as PR, social media, and events teams
- Achieve 98% adherence to design guidelines
3. OKR for accessibility
All modern digital products need to be accessible to a diverse set of users. OKRs ensure this is a priority for everyone on the team.
Objective: Improve accessibility of the website
Key results:
- Audit visual accessibility elements, such as site structure, colors, contrast, font size, readability, etc. and plan changes
- Conduct user testing for accessibility
- Achieve Level AAA and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) standards in six months
- Get design certifications in accessibility
4. OKR for dark mode experience
Dark mode has become a widely used tactic for accessibility and usability reasons. As a new app, you might not have dark mode at all. If that’s your goal, here’s what the OKR would look like.
Objective: Implement high-quality dark mode experience
Key results:
- Implement dark mode across all critical user flows
- Increase dark mode usage by 25%
- Achieve 90% positive feedback on the dark mode design
5. OKR for design innovation
A successful design team also shapes the future of design itself. They create and publish innovative design solutions that get adopted widely. If your team’s focus is design innovation, it helps to set specific OKRs for that.
Objective: Foster innovation in design
Key results:
- Conduct five design hackathons or workshops to find innovative solutions to the top three design problems of the year
- Implement and test twelve innovative design features
- Win three innovative design awards
6. OKRs for designer productivity
Every design leader wants to foster a high-performing and productive environment. Setting OKRs for productivity helps achieve this more effectively.
Objective: Achieve 80% productivity across all resources
Key results:
- Achieve 98% resource utilization in the design team
- Complete 90% of design tasks within deadline
- Reduce rework to less than 10%
7. OKRs for design project management
Parallel to productivity is the efficiency of the design team, which needs a seamless flow of work from one stage to another. OKRs for design workflow management would be as follows.
Objective: Streamline the design process
Key results:
- Reduce design iteration cycle time by 25%
- Minimize lag between two workflow stages to 4 hours
- Meet 100% of the acceptance criteria on all design tasks
8. OKR for collaboration
Design teams are at the crossroads of brand, marketing, product, sales, and the customer itself. They need to work closely with these stakeholders. Let’s look at an example of OKRs for a design team’s collaboration with development, who have their own agile OKRs.
Objective: Improve collaboration with development
Key results:
- Reduce designer-developer feedback loop time by 20%
- Achieve 95% design handoff accuracy
- Reduce lag between design and development to 24 hours
9. OKR for error state design
Error state design has an enormous impact on user experience, as it defines what happens when something goes wrong. Good error states ensure that the user is redirected to the right way to continue their journey. OKRs for error state design are as follows.
Objective: Improve error state design
Key results:
- Ensure 100% of error states are noticeable
- Reduce user drop-off rate by 15% during error states
- Achieve 90% positive user feedback on error state designs
10. OKR for dashboard design
Lastly, let’s look at an example of a specific design element, i.e., dashboards. If you’re in the business of dashboard design, the following can be your OKRs.
Objective: Improve dashboard design
Key results:
- Increase dashboard usability score by 25%
- Reduce dashboard load time by 2 seconds
- Reduce refresh rate from one in 5 minutes to once in 60 seconds
Without the constraints of the real world, the above examples might seem easy. That doesn’t mean you won’t face challenges while implementing them. Here’s what you’ll face and some ideas to overcome them.
Summarize this article for me pleaseChallenges in Implementing OKRs in Design
Challenges in implementing OKRs in the design team can be operational, practical, cultural, or managerial. Some of the most common challenges are as follows.
Lack of clear objectives
Design teams often work with vague or ambiguous objectives like ‘make banner attractive.’ This is unhelpful. For instance, an objective like “improve design quality” is too broad and open to interpretation. Anyone can argue that their output is of better quality than before.
Solution: To overcome this, define clear, actionable objectives, such as ‘redesign the homepage to improve user engagement by 20%.’ Comprehensive OKR templates can help you get started.
Inadequate key results
If objectives give you direction, key results act as milestones. Design teams may set key results that are either too difficult to measure or unrelated to their objectives.
Solution: Make your key results quantifiable and directly tied to the objectives. If improving user engagement is the objective, your key results can be ‘reduce user error rates by 15%.’ Some of the best OKR software available today can help with this.
Resistance to change
Implementing OKRs may be difficult for team members accustomed to traditional working methods. They might view OKRs as additional bureaucracy, rejecting them actively or at least passively.
Solution: Ease the teams into OKR adoption. Provide training sessions to help them understand the benefits of OKRs. Encourage them to choose their own objectives, giving them autonomy and accountability.
Poor alignment with other teams
OKRs must align with the goals of other departments to ensure cohesive progress toward company-wide objectives. Design teams may struggle with alignment, causing conflicting priorities.
Solution: Facilitate regular inter-departmental meetings to ensure all teams work toward compatible goals and timelines. Set up processes for collecting a design brief, acceptance criteria, quantitative and qualitative feedback, etc.
Insufficient resources
Implementing OKRs requires resources, including people, time, and the right tools. Design teams may find themselves under-resourced, leading to burnout and unmet objectives.
Solution: To address this, give your teams the right tools. Automate as much as you can to avoid overloading your team members. Choose a virtual workplace platform like ClickUp to manage tasks, set goals, track progress, and adapt nimbly.
Summarize this article for me pleaseSetting and Measuring Performance Indicators in Design
Design teams are often partial to their favorite tools. They might want to use their existing toolkit to track their OKRs as well. While this might work, it is more effective to use a comprehensive goals management system like ClickUp for design teams.
Here’s how you can set up and measure performance indicators in design.
Define objectives
Start by defining clear, strategic objectives for your design team. For each objective, define key results that are quantifiable and time-bound.
If you’re new to OKRs, use ClickUp Brain to brainstorm ideas for OKRs. The AI feature gives you instant answers to all your questions about objectives, relevant key results, and more.
Set goals
ClickUp Goals is a great way to set every objective and key result on a shared platform. You can also assign them to individuals to facilitate better tracking. For example, you can use ClickUp to measure user satisfaction score, app crash rate, task completion rate, etc.
Use the ClickUp OKR template to put your ideas into action immediately. Break down your design goals into tasks, track progress of each key result, and manage the OKR cycle with this intermediate-level template.
Monitor progress
Collect data on key results to monitor the progress of your design initiatives continuously.
You can use ClickUp Forms to conduct surveys or collect feedback. You can also set up customizable ClickUp Dashboards to track the metrics you need.
Review and adjust strategies
Regularly review performance on your design team OKRs and adapt accordingly. You can even incorporate these reviews in your weekly team meetings. If you didn’t achieve your key results, identify the reasons, and refine your approach.
This iterative process ensures continuous improvement and adaptability. For instance, if the app crash rate has not reduced as expected, investigate the causes and implement more targeted fixes.
Summarize this article for me pleaseAchieve Your Design Goals With ClickUp
In modern workplaces, design is an integral part of the business. It is the competitive differentiation. It is also the single most critical aspect of customer experience. So, it would be a big mistake to run design projects without clear goals, objectives, and corresponding key results.
Don’t make that mistake. Set clear OKRs, publish them, make them accessible, and enable automatic tracking, all on ClickUp’s project management tool!
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