Outcome Over Output: How UXers Can Leverage an Outcome-Based Mindset by Malini Rao

In today's outcome-driven business landscape, UX professionals must transcend feature delivery and focus on creating measurable impact. This talk explores how to shift from an output-centric to an outcome-focused mindset, empowering UX teams to drive strategic business results. We'll dive into the critical distinction between outputs (deliverables) and outcomes (tangible benefits), illustrating how this difference transforms UX from a tactical function to a strategic driver.

We'll address common challenges, such as balancing user needs with business goals and navigating stakeholder pressure for feature-driven development. Practical strategies and real-world examples will be shared for defining, measuring, and achieving desired user and business outcomes. This includes aligning with stakeholders on business objectives during discovery, conducting thorough user research to uncover needs that align with these objectives, and mapping user insights to business outcomes during collaborative kickoff sessions.

Furthermore, we'll discuss how to create solutions that deliver UX outcomes, utilizing storytelling and data-driven insights to influence stakeholders. We'll emphasize the importance of robust measurement strategies, including the use of metrics like SUS and SEQs, to evaluate success and drive continuous improvement. Key takeaways will highlight the necessity of a sound UX strategy, deep user research, and collaborative facilitation. Attendees will learn how to take accountability for business results and position UX as a vital contributor to organizational success, moving beyond usability to strategic impact.

1. Outcome Over Output:
How UXers Can Leverage an
Outcome-Based Mindset
Malini Rao
@malinitweets

2. How many of you have
experienced timely feature delivery
as success in your organization?

3. Most Organizations are
Output Driven

4. Even though they
want to achieve
Outcomes!

5. Old Habits!
Feature-Driven
Date-Driven
Budget-Driven
Stakeholder-opinion-Driven

6. UX teams struggle even more!
•Hard to measure meaningful user outcomes
•Hard to balancing user needs with business goals especially
when stakeholders prioritize feature delivery over user impact
FRICTION!
User-driven insights Shipping fast

7. UX teams uphill pushback with user-
centered or data-driven approaches
Focus is still on
outputs - Features
and designs

8. Challenge & Opportunity for UX
Define UX not just to ensure usability but directly
influences retention, revenue and competitive
differentiation

Solve real user problems and deliver
meaningful value
Value articulated in terms that resonate with business
stakeholders.

9. But why this buzz with Outcomes?
•Increased competition
•The need to invest in AI and automation
•Securing services with robust and scalable platforms
•Reduce costs amidst economic uncertainty
Relentless pressures of the modern market:
Need for tangible, measurable results
(outcomes)
that impact bottom line and customer satisfaction.

10. Embrace the outcome-
based mindset!
Building the Outcome-Thinking Muscle:
A Practical Approach

11. Understanding Outcomes and Outputs
Output:
A deliverable, a feature, a product, or a service
E.g, Launching a new website design
Outcome:
A tangible benefit or change resulting from that output
E.g, Increase user engagement with the brand
What
So What/ Why

12. Embedding Outcome-Based Thinking
Across the Organization
•Outcome-based thinking is most powerful when
treated as a strategic imperative
•It must be embedded across every layer of the
organization to drive meaningful impact
•Driving Synergy Through Shared Business Outcomes
•Aligning cross-functional teams to the same
business outcomes fosters collaboration
•Shared metrics help focus teams on solving the
right problems for maximum ROI

13. Your basic mantra to align on value-
driven outcomes
1. Why are we doing this?
2. How will the world change
because of this?
3. How will we measure success?
3 Questions

14. Framework for an Outcome-Based
UX Approach
Design
Process
step 1
step 2
step 3
step 4
Align UX with Business
Outcomes
Identify User Needs &
Opportunities
Mapping Insights to
Business Outcomes
Design for Outcomes, Not
features
step 5
Measuring UX Outcomes:
Demonstrating Impact

15. Step1: Align UX with Business Outcomes
FRAMEWORK FOR
AN OUTCOME-BASED
UX APPROACH

16. Reframing discovery to include
business outcomes
•Discovery often starts with user needs & research—but it must also include
business goals
•As a strategic partner, collaborate with stakeholders early to define concrete
business objectives and related customer outcomes
•Examples include:
•Increase customer retention by 10%
•Reduce customer support tickets by 25%
•Increase customer satisfaction by 20%
•Conduct pre-research to move beyond output-based conversations to outcome-
driven strategies
•Key outcomes for UX from this step - Foundation for design brief and catalyst
for research focus

17. Align on what success looks like
Establish experience metrics that
correlate to business success:
•SUS (System Usability Scale)
at the product suite level
•SEQ (Single Ease Questions)
at the workflow level
Establish target scores to build
shared expectations and drive
alignment

18. Step2: Identifying User Needs and Opportunities
FRAMEWORK FOR
AN OUTCOME-BASED
UX APPROACH

19. Make room for deeper & more
strategic research
Outcome based research planning
•Customer journeys and Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD)
for new product development
•Competitive analysis when market
differentiation is key
•Interviews, surveys and Usability testing for
incremental improvements
Identify opportunities that will drive retention, adoption
and satisfaction
Articulate the value of research asks & challenge/ align
on focus areas that saves dollars and eliminates shelf
ware
Key outcomes for UX from this step - Shared
understanding of problem/ opportunity space and broad
design strategy

21. The customer journey
and how we serve it!

23. Competitor 1 vs Competitor 2 vs My Company
Competitor 1
Competitor 2
Our Product

24. Step3: The Kicko’’ - Mapping Insights to Business Outcomes
FRAMEWORK FOR
AN OUTCOME-BASED
UX APPROACH

25. Outcome-driven kickoff - Collaborative
mapping of insights to goals
Align on strategy and focus for
execution first and timelines and
deliverables next
Ensure product investments are
directly tied to meaningful
impact - Everyone understand
the project from both user and
stakeholder perspectives
Research insights and Design
vision/ ideas are prioritized for
execution - Often forgotten step
to avoid organic cherry-picking

26. Opportunity Solution Trees are great to map work to the bigger picture

27. Example of using the Opportunity Solution tree to strategize a major
product investment for innovation and differentiation
Pre-Kickoff: Leadership alignment and direction on outcomes for project
Design Sprint: Brainstorming solutions for potential opportunities
Kickoff: Product triad alignment on opportunities to focus on based on research

28. The Opportunity solution tree as a strategic product canvas
Year 1
Year 2
Year 3
Product 1
Product 1
Product 1
Product 2
Product 2
Product 2
Product 1
Product 1
Product 1
Product 1
Product 1Product 2

29. Step 4: Design Phase- Creating Solutions that Deliver UX Outcomes
FRAMEWORK FOR
AN OUTCOME-BASED
UX APPROACH

30. The Pragmatic design phase
Highly Focused
Act on clear business
outcomes and research-
backed user insights
Curated Narratives
Instead of just high-fidelity
prototypes, focus on storytelling,
before and afters and competitive
references to justify decisions
Pragmatic Scope
Balance innovation with
technical feasibility,
development efficiencies
and other business
operational challenges

31. Storyboards

32. The Pragmatic design phase
Highly Focused
Act on clear business
outcomes and research-
backed user insights
Curated Narratives
Instead of just high-fidelity
prototypes, focus on storytelling,
before and afters and competitive
references to justify decisions
Pragmatic Scope
Balance innovation with
technical feasibility,
development efficiencies
and other business
operational challenges
Breakdown Vision
UXers should also be able to
articulate not just the vision
but the incremental
breakdown of continuous
value to the customer

33. EXECUTION STRATEGY
VISION
PHASE 1 PHASE 2
The Influence Cycle
From Vision to Execution

34. Step 5: Measurement - Evaluating Success and Improving Outcomes
FRAMEWORK FOR
AN OUTCOME-BASED
UX APPROACH

35. “What gets measured gets managed”
We have metrics
•Usability metrics
•Vanity metrics
•Product usage data
What we don’t
usually have
•Metrics at scale
•Progress trends
•ROI metrics
Feature or workflow/
task level
Product or suite level
SEQs
SUS

36. Key task 3 Key task 5 Key task 6
Aggregating granular insights for suite-wide priority
Became the basis of major UX product integration and modernization
investment and instituting a Accessibility OKR
Employee Tasks - Perceived Ease of Use

37. Progress Metrics at Scale
Quarterly SUS Score Trends
The bigger the customer, the more satisfied they were!
In Product feedback
framework - collect
feedback at scale
Standard Instrument
to collect and
calculate desired
experience metric
Ability to categorize
feedback by GTM
Segments, personas
etc.

38. Key Takeaways
UX outcomes are essential for achieving business
outcomes.
A sound UX strategy, rooted in business context, is
crucial.
Deep user research and strategic toolsets are necessary.
UX professionals should act as facilitators and
collaborators.
UX teams should take accountability for business results.
Measuring experience at scale is crucial to
demonstrating UX’s role in driving revenue, retention,
and competitive advantage.

39. Embrace the outcome-
based mindset!
Elevate UX impact and drive strategic
alignment

40. Thanks!
Malini Rao
@malinitweets
Let’s connect! Also, contact
me if you are looking for a
UX leader and strategist!
[email protected]