Towards Meaningful Metrics: Influencing QBRs, Scorecards and Impact Storytelling

This past Q1, we laid the foundations for understanding the AI Shift. Now, we’re turning our focus to something even more foundational and far-reaching: metrics.

At our Design Executive Council Metrics Roundtable on May 15 in New York City, our Council dug into how design leaders are helping businesses advance strategic priorities by creating more meaningful, emotionally resonant metrics—the kind that not only measure outcomes, but shape behavior and decision-making across the enterprise.

From lowering anxiety in banking experiences to creating ease in healthcare, design often shapes how people feel—yet few metrics frameworks capture that. The line between experience and business impact is still blurry. It's much more than NPS. As design executive Alex Hsiao stated so clearly: "we need to draw the line between design and business."

We convened senior design executives who lead or have led at some of the most influential global companies—Wells Fargo, Humana, Intuit, Mastercard, Target, Amazon, Visa, 3M, and others. These are some of the largest brands and companies, yet every leader in the room is navigating similar headwinds: new growth imperatives, digital transformation, political pressure, and the acceleration of AI.

Different companies, different business models, but the same core question kept surfacing: are we measuring what truly matters? How do we identify what really matters to addressing the top business challenges today and tomorrow? It’s easy to default to what’s quantifiable. It’s much harder to advocate for what’s meaningful. Humana's Chief Design Officer, Jason Ferrell, expressed it best: "data is everywhere, insight is nowhere."

Many established firms are navigating seismic changes as consumers develop new behaviors and expectations. New expectations for experiences means companies who have long sat on established moats are now rethinking what it means to deliver value through more personalized, instantaneous, and intuitive experiences. From reimagining the future of the bank branch, how healthcare information is delivered, to how media is consumed and the impacts of changing search behaviors.

That tension became the through-line of our conversation. Businesses need to better define and position their metrics so that they can incentivize the right behaviors that lead to the ideal state of the future.

To make this tangible, four key uses cases emerged for us to consider in our Q2 2025 metrics research track:

1. Business Scorecard Alignment

Design has a seat at the table, but are we contributing to the scorecard or just reacting to it?

We asked:

What values are already reflected in your company’s metrics?
What values should be there but aren’t?
What customer outcomes—like trust, confidence, or simplicity—are getting missed?

Rather than squeeze design into business KPIs, we explored how design can help redefine what a healthy scorecard looks like in the first place. As Kurt Walecki emphasized: "metrics is often required, but soul sucking." We'd like to imagine that it doesn't have to be this way.

2. Diagnosing the State of the Company

Metrics aren’t just data points, they’re belief systems. They tell you what a company values, what it prioritizes, and what it ignores.

We asked:

Is the customer present in your business scorecard?
Can design leaders clearly articulate their impact to the CEO, CFO, or board?
Is design influencing enterprise narratives, or reacting to them?

Metrics need to build bridges across the company, not reinforce silos within it. Purvi Shah shared “when design is owned across the entire enterprise, the real challenge is figuring out how to prioritize and integrate it across all the lines of business. It’s messy, but it’s necessary if you want to drive impact at scale.”

3. Clarifying the Roles of Design and Product

The overlap between design and product is only growing. But metrics should clarify where each brings value, not blur it further.

We explored questions like:

What is uniquely ours to own as design leaders?
How does scale change the metrics we need to track and report?
Are we showing up in QBRs with the right signals for the right audiences?

This isn’t just about roles and responsibilities, it’s about how metrics reflect influence and leadership at scale. Nathalie Huni shared how "the best collaborations between design and product often come down not to the role definition, but the personalities between the two."

4. Communicating the Intangibles

Some of the most powerful outcomes of design are emotional and cultural. And those are the hardest to measure.

Still, many leaders in the room shared how they are beginning to track sentiment, emotional response, and trust. One example stood out. At Wells Fargo, the team was able to measure the reduction of user anxiety over time within the app. It’s a reminder that metrics aren’t just about efficiency, they can reflect care and impact too.

We asked:

What signals can we capture that reflect emotional value?
When is storytelling more powerful than a metric?
How do we make the invisible, visible?

Looking Ahead: Toward Meaningful Metrics

A few North Star questions stuck with me.

Are we measuring the right things, or just the things that are easy to measure?

What role does design play in shaping culture, not just output?

How do we advocate for the immeasurable without losing rigor?

We also mapped a spectrum—from revenue, retention, and PMF on one end, to emotions, affinity, and sensemaking on the other. Most companies stay on the left side. Our job, as design leaders, is to bring balance to that spectrum.

Metrics should express what the company values, and design can help stretch that definition forward.

We’ll be releasing a white paper and artifacts that captures the insights, questions, and frameworks from our continued sessions. I believe it will help both design and business leaders move beyond surface-level reporting and step into a more strategic, systems-aware conversation.

Because metrics aren’t just about proving value. They’re about shaping the conversation around what is meaningful.

Towards Meaningful Metrics: Influencing QBRs, Scorecards and Impact Storytelling