An introduction to HCD measurement concepts

What is HCD measurement?

Welcome to the measurement phase of human-centered design (HCD)! This guide will help you determine how to leverage existing data to design and implement a measurement strategy that increases understanding of how a program, product, service, or system affects the world, as well as its overall value to the audience, agency, and federal space. This is the measurement concepts guide. Like the other concept guides in the HCD series, it provides a foundation to understand the “why” of measuring human-centered projects. It complements the methods and activities (the “how”) in the companion HCD measurement operations guide. We designed these two guides to speak to each other - you can start with either one, and move between them as needed.

Why learn about measurement concepts?

At this point, you likely have solid user insight from your discovery phase that has informed the design, testing, and iteration of your programs, products, services, and systems. Measurement will help you determine its impact and value. Throughout these guides, we’ll refer to programs, products, services, and systems as interventions, for shorthand. We use the word “intervention” because anything that’s been designed by humans intervenes in the world; it changes the world in some way. Some of those changes, whether desired or undesired, are predictable, while others are not, because all interventions, outside the controlled space of a lab, encounter variables we may or may not know about. This is especially true in public sector design, where we frequently engage with “wicked problems.”¹

Setting expectations

Because measurement is such a broad and complex space, we’ve made a few assumptions, to help narrow and focus the scope of this guidance. You can read more about these in the appendix.

We assume:

1. Users of these guides are not experts in data, evaluation, or social sciences, nor do you have access to such measurement experts.
2. All situations under consideration for measurement are multi-dimensional, indirectly measurable, and human-centered.
3. Measuring the effects of interventions takes time.
4. You have not had the opportunity to plan ahead for measurement, so you’re building a measurement instrument to understand the effects of an intervention that’s already operating in the wider world.
5. This method and approach to measurement is just one way to achieve your goal of understanding how your intervention is functioning in context.

HCD measurement concepts guide sections

• Understanding data types
• The mixed methods approach
• Dealing with a data-filled world
• Pitfalls in data types
• Intro to compiled indicators
• Data storytelling with compiled indicators
• Measuring impact to understand value
• Appendix 1: HCD measurement guide basis
• Appendix 2: Audience
• Appendix 3: Background and assumptions

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