Looking for an Evidence-Based Severity Scale for UXR Findings (Beyond Product Context)

Understanding users
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Hey all. I’m posting on behalf of someone in my LinkedIn network who posed a thoughtful question I’d love to get input on.

They’re looking for an evidence-based severity scale to help categorize research recommendations — not for product features or usability bugs, but more in the realm of program delivery and student support (think enterprise or service design contexts, not tooling-specific environments).

They’ve reviewed NN/g’s usability severity ratings, Google’s HEART framework, and Intercom’s RICE model — but those are either feature-focused or better suited for product teams.

What they really need is a way to help non-product stakeholders (like ops, program leaders, or student services teams) understand which research insights matter most and why.

Has anyone seen or created something like this? Even an ad hoc framework, equity-centered prioritization model, or service blueprint adaptation would be helpful.

Thanks in advance!

3 Likes
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Great question! I personally haven’t seen frameworks that tackle non-product related or feature based insights. However, I wonder if @Bryan or @MoData might have some insight here

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Hey @mschindler! Love the question, sometimes it’s a bit easier to quantify research about things than to quantify the impact of research itself.

We’ve written a couple posts about impact mapping that have great resources on the subject:

We also dig a quick dig online for some other frameworks that could help categorize your research recommendations:

Hope these help! Would love to hear what their team decides to implement. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around the problem. Is it for defining the value of the work or the contribution of the work?

Ryan Rumsey usually has good content around this stuff: