Establish Metrics

Establish Metrics

• Propose Appropriate Metrics
• Measures to consider

Should your organization fail to assign metrics for measuring its Web design’s success, it falls to the Web design group to propose them.

In 1999, Martha Lee and Brad Mehelenbacher conducted a survey of technical communicators to learn how they felt about working with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). Based on their findings, they concluded that along with complex interpersonal social issues, organizational awareness is essential to producing quality communications. They specifically advocated the “importance of examining the organizational contexts in which technical communicators must interact in order to understand how to improve their effectiveness as communicators” (546). Lee and Mehelenbacher go on to suggest that part of the problem is inequity in the metrics used for Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and technical communicators. While organizations necessitate collaboration between communicators and SMEs, they reward each group’s work in significantly different ways. Web designers are information designers who are likely to fall victim to a lack of organizational support and uneven metrics that leave them feeling like second-class citizens (Redish, 1995). 

Metrics are a means of setting benchmarks for success and failure and establishing the Web design group’s role in the organization. By providing an organization with a substantive comparison of costs and benefits, the Web team can establish its roles and responsibilities. Jakob Nielsen has described metrics as a means by which managers can track progress and support designers’ decisions (Alertbox, 2001). Essentially, metrics can provide you with a common language with which to negotiate with the non-designers you work with and business managers you report to.

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