Product & metrics

HEART Metrics

Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, Task success: UX goals you can measure.

⏱ 11 minIntermediateBy GoogleSince 2010

Use it when

Defining how you'll know a design worked.

You'll walk away with

Goals, signals and metrics for each chosen category.

Step 1 · The idea

Turn “better UX” into numbers you can track

HEART is a framework from Google researchers Kerry Rodden, Hilary Hutchinson and Xin Fu, published in 2010. It gives teams five categories of user-centred metrics: Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, Task success.

It comes with a simple process — Goals → Signals → Metrics — so you measure what matters to users, not just what's easy to count, like page views.

Designers are often asked “how will we know it worked?”. HEART gives you a clear, credible answer before you launch.

The model

Five categories

Happiness

How people feel: satisfaction, ease, trust.

Example: Surveys (SUS, CSAT, NPS), ratings.

Engagement

How much and how often people use it, among existing users.

Example: Frequency, intensity, depth per user.

Adoption

New users of a product or feature.

Example: New accounts, first use of a feature.

Retention

Whether people keep coming back over time.

Example: Returning users, churn, repeat use.

Task success

Effectiveness and efficiency: can people complete tasks?

Example: Completion rate, time on task, error rate.

The process

Goals → Signals → Metrics

For each category you choose, work through three questions.

1 · Goal

What do we want users to achieve or feel?

e.g. People know exactly when their food will arrive.

2 · Signal

What would they do or say if we succeed?

e.g. They stop calling support to ask where the order is.

3 · Metric

How do we measure the signal over time?

e.g. “Where is my order?” calls per 1,000 orders.

Step 3 · Worked example

Measuring a live tracking map

A fictional food delivery app, “Thali”, launches a live map showing the rider and an updated ETA.

Your order

Arriving in 12 min 🛵

Rider is 1.8 km away

Track order

Call rider

Step 1

The feature

Before launch, the team agrees how they'll know it worked.

Before launch

Chosen

❤️ Happiness

🆕 Adoption

✅ Task success

Skipped: Engagement, Retention (measured later)

Step 2

Pick the categories

Not all five. Pick what this feature is meant to change.

Select

Task success

G: know exactly when food arrives

S: no “where is it?” call

M: calls per 1,000 orders

Step 3

Define goals, signals, metrics

Each metric traces back to a user goal. That stops “vanity metrics”.

GSM

Week 4

Adoption62%

ETA rating4.3/5

Calls per 1,000−35%

Late-night orders: ETA still off

Step 4

Read the results

Mostly good — but late-night ETAs are still wrong. That points to the next research question.

Learn

Fictional example; numbers are illustrative.

Step 4 · Try it

HEART builder

Tick the categories that matter, then edit the goal, signal and metric for your own feature. The example is filled in.

Feature or product

HHappiness— How people feel: satisfaction, ease, trust.

Goal

Signal

Metric

EEngagement— How much and how often people use it, among existing users.

AAdoption— New users of a product or feature.

Goal

Signal

Metric

RRetention— Whether people keep coming back over time.

TTask success— Effectiveness and efficiency: can people complete tasks?

Goal

Signal

Metric

Watch out

Common mistakes

✓ Do

Start with goals, not with what's easy to measure
Choose only the categories that fit
Track trends over time, not one-off numbers
Pair metrics with research to learn why
Agree on metrics before launch

✗ Avoid

Counting page views and calling it engagement
Tracking all five for every tiny feature
Metrics with no link to a user goal
Celebrating adoption without checking retention
Changing metrics after seeing results

Cheat sheet

HEART in one screen

H  HAPPINESS     attitudes: satisfaction, ease   → surveys, ratings
E  ENGAGEMENT    depth of use by existing users  → frequency, intensity
A  ADOPTION      new users of product/feature    → first use, sign-ups
R  RETENTION     users who come back             → repeat use, churn
T  TASK SUCCESS  effectiveness & efficiency      → completion, time, errors

FOR EACH CHOSEN CATEGORY
GOAL    what should users achieve or feel?
SIGNAL  what would they do/say if we succeed?
METRIC  how do we measure that over time?

Use it at work

Figma template

A ready-made canvas for running this framework with your team. Free, editable, and it works in Figma and FigJam.

Figma & FigJam · free

HEART metrics plan

Goals → Signals → Metrics grid
All five HEART categories

1Download the SVG, or copy it to your clipboard.
2In Figma or FigJam, drag the file onto the canvas — or paste with ⌘V / Ctrl V.
3Everything arrives as editable layers: type in the boxes, add stickies, duplicate rows.

Download SVGOpen in Figma ↗

Check yourself