Today’s featured Helio post from Mitchell Clements is great, and helps to define the overlaps that design must strive for.
In Glare, we’ve broken this down into four areas with a progression of impact that is a bit more nuanced.
Credibility → Usefulness → Desirability → Viability
In theory, this should create a value chain, which we frame as design impact. Curious on your thoughts.
What I’m seeing here is that:
Credibility + Usefulness + Desirability = Viability
Is that right?
It took me a minute to figure out where the chain is coming from, but now I’m seeing it.
Is this chain particular to a specific problem? Or is it supposed to be generic (as credibility covers all of Define)?
That’s an interesting way to look at it. I tend to seem the design impact as a multiple each column you master. If you can design with results first, your impact is significantly more that designing with some design research.
I see it as:
1x, 2x, 3x, 4x
The more you focus on impact, the more value you create for the business.
This was sort of how I was seeing it initially as well.
How are we measuring value @Bryan? 
That happens in the fourth facet of Glare, where you agree to the business goals, align the business workflows, and map the UX metrics to the business metrics.
An increase in UX value can be created by lifting the business metrics.
Rad. I love the connection of the worlds (workflows, metrics and goals) - so pumped seeing this come to fruition!
My question, then, is if Value is a handshake between Usability + Viability, how do we define whether something is “Viable”?
The business metrics should have solid baselines.
Gross profit (and related metrics like margin or LTV/CAC) are the quantitative signals of viability.
Decided to explore this idea a bit more. I’m sure @Helge has much to say on this topic (perhaps I’ve tainted it with the words user 
)
I just spent some time reading my way through this research. It’s from PWC and based on more than 3000 interviews as I understand it in the UK.
https://www.pwcresearch.com/uc/images/GrowthThroughExperience_2025.pdf
It challenges and creates a much more open minded and nuanced approach to what customers (and also ‘users’ I would assume) find valuable. And demonstrate that it’s a whole lot of different things.
I would argue it supports the thinking that there isn’t any one or a limited set of universal values that could be measured to understand an organiations ability to deliver value, but you have to figure out what the customer/user values for each experience (or in the report they do divide it into industries).
It’s a good read and at least I found it to include several valuable revelations (don’t AI summarize it… you might lose the essence
My ADD brain would never let me read that whole thing 
(ok, maybe if I put a bit of effort into it).
But, I’m sure that this goes back to scenarios > personas
This is a great read, thanks for sharing @Helge! I’m only a few pages in, but I like the four pillars that the GTX model is based on: Coherent, Engaging, Personal, and Distinctive.
Amazing resources you share @Helge!
I’ve done a first pass, and will need to dive deeper into this! Glare’s goal in Define is to help teams define User Needs to align their UX metrics to evaluate many of these same dimensions.
Glare starts with user needs, which helps to set the boundaries of the design intent. Each need expresses what must be true for people to make progress. Lots of overlap here with GTX.
For example:
These aren’t yet measured, they’re design hypotheses or statements of intent.
UX metrics sit between what you intended to design (Glare) and how it was actually experienced , or that’s what I can understand from GTX.
They measure the emotional and behavioral outputs of those needs:
UX metrics make these subjective responses quantifiable signals or data that tells you whether design intent translated into perceived value.
This is complex stuff, and we’re continuing to look for ways to keep simplifying it. We’ve decided to make it all open source to encourage others to support this rather large endeavor. We’ve already put 50,000 hours into making these ideas functional across customers.
