Summary
There is nothing more frustrating than dedicating your blood, sweat, and tears to developing a product, only to see it shut down for no particular reason. We still lack standards for measuring potential opportunities and solutions—so leadership continues to base decisions on intuition, personal experience, and other factors that often barely correlate with success. Organizations large and small need agreed-upon measures of potential product-market fit for their concepts and solutions, ones that help establish unmet needs and lead to designs that users understand and want to use. The DesignOps team at Athenahealth has solved this problem by creating a standardized measurement framework—including qualitative and quantitative instruments—that helps product teams measure their concepts and solutions early and often. These are measures that leaders can use to make informed investment decisions across the larger portfolio, and that free product teams to be awesome at what they do: designing, managing, and developing products that lead to better experiences for users.
Key Insights
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Scale should emphasize meaningful impact over just quantity.
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Lack of agency in teams can result in counterproductive behaviors.
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Government incentives can shape market demand but may lead to poor user experiences.
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Design is essential to differentiate products in a competitive market.
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Creating a shared language for design improves communication across departments.
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Involving cross-disciplinary teams fosters better decision-making processes.
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User perception significantly influences attrition and referral rates.
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A methodical approach to evaluate workflows can identify high-friction areas.
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Continuous engagement and validation can lead to more effective product features.
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Design impacts organizational outcomes and should be valued as a strategic lever.
Notable Quotes
"Scale isn't just about quantity; it's about the quality that you are delivering."
"When teams start to feel powerless, they take on bizarre behaviors like cutting corners."
"We always saw ourselves as a services company, and over time felt our clients were taking on too much work."
"User frustration is super high; this software hurts to use."
"Those discussions were interesting because people were learning a lot as they went through them."
"We proved that design impacts outcomes; it absolutely does matter."
"We had something called a demo event; we decided not to just chastise everyone for low scores."
"We have a way to make product decisions based on evidence."
"The reality is users aren’t unhappy; they’re trapped in a system."
"You’re not going to be successful if you go off in a corner and do things on your own."
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