In our design work with customers, we often see teams overwhelmed by trying to get something to work, or even just hit a deadline.
Managing expectation internally can overwhelm the team…and they forget about their users. It’s possible for your product to technically work, but still leave users feeling confused, disappointed, or let down.
The disconnect is expectations.The Expectations UX metric helps teams measure this gap. It captures two key parts of the user experience:
- What users expect before interacting with a design (based on what they see or understand).
- How well the experience matched those expectations after they’ve used it.
By asking users to share their initial predictions, then rate how closely the experience aligned with those predictions, we get insight into where we’re surprising, confusing, or delighting people. These two pieces are then scored to produce a single Expectations score—a quick way to see how well your design is meeting users where they thought it would.
Why does this matter? Because misaligned expectations can lead to friction, abandonment, or loss of trust—even if your design is usable. Tracking expectations over time helps us spot disconnects early and design with better clarity, guidance, and follow-through.
Source: Glare Framework - Expectations UX Metric
Our Glare framework shows off an example of using the Expectations metric to measure how well a new feature on the e-commerce clothing site called Getup connects with users. The Getup team needed to know whether users can predict what the feature does, and if the actual experience lives up to those expectations.
Discussion
Do user expectations factor into your product design or marketing today? Is expectations a useful elements to measure when it comes to user experience?
Take a look at our Expectations page and let us know what you think about using this metric:
- Very Clear
- Somewhat Clear
- Neutral
- Somewhat Confusing
- Very Confusing