Introduction
Have you ever wondered how Okta ensures our products are easy to use? Okta’s Impact Metrics program is a Research-driven initiative designed to help us do just that.
TLDR:
Okta’s Impact Metrics program is a two question quarterly survey that tracks ease of use over time, and explains how the insights help us measure, track, and improve the user experience across Okta. This is important because it allows us to identify and flag issues, ensuring Okta customers can easily accomplish their most important tasks on our platform.
Measuring the Health of Our Product Experience
Our program runs a two-question quarterly survey to measure changes in the ease of use of our products over time. We focus on six “core” experiences across the Okta platform, with the main goal of understanding how easy it is for customers to accomplish their key "jobs" with Okta. These metrics are like a regular checkup for our products, giving us a clear picture of their health.
How Did This Program Start: Consistent Feedback Across the Platform
When Okta's Engineering, Product, and Design (EPD) teams needed to understand the user experience, we often relied on one off studies or surveys. While these methods provided valuable insights for specific projects, they did not offer a way to consistently measure the overall health of the platform over time. We lacked a shared, regular "checkup" to spot emerging issues and track the impact of our work.
To address this gap, we launched the Impact Metrics Program.
Our goal was to create a simple, repeatable process that provides a regular pulse on our product's ease of use. By creating a quarterly two question survey, we now have a consistent, shared metric that allows teams across Okta to monitor changes, set goals, and ensure we're always improving the experience for our customers. This program gives us the data we need to move from reactive problem solving to proactive health monitoring of our user experience.
Why We Care: Spotting Problems and Tracking Progress
By consistently tracking these metrics, we can:
- Monitor the health of the product experience.
- Measure the effects of product changes.
- Spot problems quickly before they become major issues.
- Set concrete goals (like OKRs) and track our progress toward them.
This data is crucial for product teams and executive leadership, as it helps us make informed decisions and prioritize improvements based on real user feedback.
The Keys to Success
The effectiveness of the Impact Metrics program is built on three core goals:
- Consistent Tracking: We have repeated check-ins each quarter, allowing us to set dedicated goals for each metric and track our progress over time.
- Actionable Solutions: The program not only collects data, we also act on it. We use the feedback we receive to develop and align our roadmaps to address identified opportunities.
- Shared Ownership: The success of our user experience is a group effort. The metrics are owned across EPD (Engineering, Product, and Design), ensuring all teams are aligned on goals and committed to improving the user experience.
What Do We Do With This Information
Once the data is collected, it's put to work immediately. We present the findings to each product group and leadership team, providing them with a clear, data-driven view of our platform’s health and highlighting opportunities for improvement.
The feedback from the surveys not only represents a snapshot in time, we actively track issues quarter over quarter to monitor trends and ensure ongoing opportunities are investigated and addressed. In some cases, that means we dedicate additional research to understand the issue. In other cases, we work with Product and Engineering to tackle the issue.
This program was built to help us learn about key issues and opportunities, but it's now a tool we use to measure the impact of our work. By tracking issues and documenting the engineering tasks that address them, we can now go back to confirm whether our solutions have successfully improved the user experience. It's a complete cycle: learn, take action, and measure success.
Summary
The Impact Metrics program provides a consistent way for us to measure the ease of use of our platform. By regularly checking in on the user experience, we can quickly identify and address issues, ultimately helping Okta customers succeed in their key tasks.
