Standard OKRs fail design teams.
Not because OKRs are bad. Because they flatten everything into business metrics. Design impact is wider than conversion rates.
POKR adds what's missing: Perspectives.
The Four Perspectives
- Credibility — Internal trust in design. Without it, you don't get resources or autonomy.
- Impact — Business outcomes. What leadership cares about.
- Usability — User success. What designers often over-index on.
- Detectability — Can users find what they need? Often ignored, always critical.
Each quarter, write objectives and key results for each perspective. This ensures you're building a sustainable design function, not just chasing short-term wins.
Examples
Credibility: Increase first-presentation approval rate from 45% to 70%
Impact: Increase new user activation from 52% to 65%
Usability: Increase task success rate from 78% to 95%
Detectability: Reduce "where is X?" support tickets by 50%
Why This Matters
Most design teams only track Impact. They ignore the rest.
But a team with high Impact and low Credibility gets their budget cut when a new VP arrives. A team with high Credibility but low Impact gets questioned when times get tough.
Balanced perspectives build resilient design functions.
How to Start
- Assess current state for each perspective (1-5)
- Prioritize 2 perspectives per quarter
- Write objectives and KRs for those
- Track monthly
You can't optimize everything. Pick the two where improvement matters most right now.
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