Can Well-Being Be Measured In Service Experiences?
Designing Well #2
“In terms of goals and indicators, rather than measuring economic productivity, isn’t it better to measure well-being instead?” Founder of SingularityNET, an artificial intelligence platform using blockchains, cognitive scientist, and AI researcher Ben Goertzel states as such in this article. Instead of investing in only productive products, he suggests that resources should be allocated to products and services that enhance well-being.
His claim that economic productivity is Voo-Doo seems to have a point. Although the concept of productivity sounds plausible, the reality is that the concept of production differs depending on the industry, sector, and stage of the company, and as his article considers, there is no simple measure for money. I strongly sympathize with his awareness of the issue. This is because I feel that the concept of “user well-being” is often missing from corporate KPIs and OKRs. Although brilliant visions and missions wish for the happiness of users and the development of society, are there not many cases in which KPIs are measured only in economic figures daily?
Methods of measuring well-being and the reliability of data
Goertzel suggests the following ways to measure product well-being.
- Perform a composite happiness survey on a random sample of people
- Do the same with service buyers
- Being able to compare datasets of random and service subjects allows us to make statistically rational inferences about whether the service increases or decreases happiness
This method of measuring well-being advocated by Goertzel is theoretically understandable, but it seems that arbitrary decisions will likely be made at the point of “random recruiting.” In addition, it seems that there are various practical issues in implementation, such as the difficulty in judging whether the product has increased the level of well-being or whether the product is acceptable to people with a high level of well-being to begin with.
Goertzel mentions a variety of happiness survey methods in the article, but Professor Laurie Santos, a professor of psychology at Yale University, thinks that among various measurement methods, the simple approach of asking straight-out, “How happy are you?” is one of the effective methods. “How good do you think your life is right now? Please select a score out of 100.” The method of asking this question is a method used even in a large-scale well-being study conducted by Hakuhodo. The service “Nesto” operated by the author also regularly conducts user satisfaction surveys, and since March 2022, it has been implementing similar questions to measure the degree of the well-being of users.
By conducting surveys, we can obtain a reference value for user well-being, but I feel that it is difficult to interpret the data. The good news is that Nesto users’ well-being scores are better than those in Hakuhodo’s national survey, and we know that the longer you use Nesto, the better your scores will be. However, I would like to think that our service contributes to people’s well-being, but due to the nature of the service, people with a high sensitivity to well-being gather from the beginning, and the more sensitive people are, the less likely they are to leave. This can also be considered to be a factor.
The factors of human well-being are intricately intertwined. I think it would be arrogant to jump to the conclusion that even if scores improve in the surveys we conduct, it is because of our service.
Does service experience improve an individual’s happiness?
Regarding whether there is any point in measuring, I feel that there is a meaning in measuring itself. The reason is that we can continue listening to the well-being of our users quantitatively. If the score changes significantly, you can tell that the user has experienced some sort of change. Changes in scores may be due to our service or external factors. However, thinking about the user’s state can be realized from the act of measurement.
It also means thinking outside the experience we are designing. Even if users can work more efficiently with a product, does that really lead to user well-being? Even if we were able to provide users with short-term pleasure through our services, is it really making them happy?
I think there will be situations where there are contradictions with business goals and KPIs. However, it seems that there are still many cases where only business goals are focused on without being conscious of the trade-off between user well-being and business goals. The conscious choice between business and well-being begins with focusing on the user’s well-being.
Understanding user well-being is a tall order. It also makes us think more about responsibility for the impact our services have. We, Nesto, feel that we have not found the optimal solution yet, from the measurement method to the analysis method. Please let us know about your initiatives as well.
Photo credit: Sota Motonaga
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