# Business Goals AI Skill Lead Area · Business Goals Move · Decision Map --- ## 1. What the Skill Does The Business Goals skill helps teams connect design work to the outcomes leadership already tracks. It is the first move inside the Lead area of Glare's Decision Map. This is where a UX metric stops being a number on a dashboard and becomes a signal that leadership can act on. Most teams measure the wrong things or measure the right things in the wrong layer. They track task completion without connecting it to product adoption. They track product adoption without connecting it to revenue. The metric sits in a report, looks fine, and gets ignored. The Business Goals skill fixes that by stacking three layers of KPIs and routing every signal to a named business pressure and a measurable goal. Every metric belongs to one of three layers — and every layer needs to connect to the one above it. | Layer | What it measures | Examples | |---|---|---| | Design KPIs | Whether users succeed in the moment | Task completion, error rate, time on task | | Product KPIs | Whether users adopt and return | Feature usage, retention, trial-to-paid conversion | | Business KPIs | Whether the company benefits | Revenue growth, churn reduction, lifetime value | A metric that lives only in the Design layer is a design metric. It becomes a signal when it connects upward to a product outcome and a business outcome. Without that chain, leadership has no reason to care. **The Vanity Metric Rule** Teams often track numbers that look good but do not connect to any decision. Page views, click counts, and app store ratings are common examples. They go up, the team feels good, and nothing changes about how the product is built or funded. The rule is simple: run every candidate metric through three questions before committing to it. Does it prove the design works for users? Does it show adoption or retention at the product level? Does it connect to growth, churn, or revenue at the business level? If any answer is no, the metric is missing a rung. Name the missing rung and fix it before the metric goes into a report. --- ## 2. Business Benefit When design metrics connect to business goals, design earns a seat in decisions that used to happen without it. Leadership starts treating UX signals as inputs to strategy, not outputs from a separate team. This helps teams: - stop presenting metrics that generate polite nodding but no action - give product and finance a chain they can trace from a design change to a business result - defend design investment in budget conversations with numbers leadership already uses - move faster because priorities are connected to outcomes, not opinions - build trust over time by being right about what the numbers will do Design becomes a lever, not a report. --- ## 3. Skill Output When used correctly, the skill produces a clear goal statement for a design effort — with each metric layer named and connected. The statement shows: - the business pressure the work is serving - the measurable goal inside that pressure - the Design KPI, Product KPI, and Business KPI that form the chain - any metrics that fail the three-question test The example below shows how this works for a mobile banking dashboard. | Field | Example Output (Mobile Banking Dashboard) | |---|---| | Business Pressure | Retention — keep customers and reduce churn | | Measurable Goal | Build brand loyalty — returning users feel in control of their finances and trust the product | | Design KPI | First-click success rate on balance and transaction history | | Product KPI | Session return rate and monthly active user frequency | | Business KPI | 90-day retention rate and reduction in account closure rate | | Metric Chain | First-click success improves → users return more frequently → 90-day retention rises | | Vanity Metric to Avoid | App store rating — it reflects general sentiment but does not connect to session return rate or retention and cannot guide a specific design decision | | Failure Mode to Watch | Stopping at the Design KPI layer. A 79% first-click success rate is a useful design signal but it is not a business result until it connects to return frequency and retention. | | Next Step Handoff | → glare-lead-mapping to build the full five-rung Chain of Proof from user need to business goal | The output connects directly to the other Lead moves: - Mapping builds the full ladder from user need to business goal using these KPIs - Workflows translates the business goal into the language of each function - Results tracks whether the goal is being moved over time --- ## 4. Prompt Strategies The prompts below show different ways to use this skill. Each example uses a mobile banking dashboard update. --- ### Prompt 1 — Diagnostic Entry: Fix a disconnected metric "Our team tracks first-click success, session duration, and app store rating for our mobile banking dashboard. Our VP of Product keeps asking how these connect to retention. Using the glare-lead-business-goals skill, run each metric through the three-question test, tell us which ones pass and which ones are vanity metrics, and recommend the right three-layer chain for this product." **Why this works:** First-click success is a Design KPI, session duration is a partial Product KPI, and app store rating is a vanity metric. This prompt uses the three-layer framework and the three-question test to identify the gap — there is no Business KPI in the current set — and replace the vanity metric with one that completes the chain. **Best for:** - auditing an existing metric plan before a leadership review - any situation where the team tracks numbers but cannot explain what they prove - preparing for a budget conversation that requires connecting design work to business outcomes --- ### Prompt 2 — Pressure Entry: Choose the right business pressure "We are updating our mobile banking dashboard and we need to decide which business pressure to connect our work to — Retention, User Experience, or Efficiency. Each one feels relevant. Using glare-lead-business-goals, help us pick the single primary pressure that best fits our initiative, name the measurable goal inside it, and identify the Design KPI, Product KPI, and Business KPI that would form the chain." **Why this works:** Work that serves all pressures usually proves none of them. This prompt forces a single primary pressure and routes it to a named goal — giving the team a specific chain to build and a specific number to move, instead of a list of metrics that look relevant but point in different directions. **Best for:** - sprint planning where the team is not sure which outcome to optimize for - connecting a dashboard redesign to a specific part of the business strategy - preparing a goal statement that can anchor an entire research and design cycle --- ### Prompt 3 — Readout Entry: Prepare a metric story for leadership "We ran a usability study on our mobile banking dashboard and first-click success on transaction history improved from 61% to 79%. We need to present this result to our CFO and VP of Product next week. Using glare-lead-business-goals, help us connect this Design KPI to a Product KPI and a Business KPI, name the business pressure it serves, and frame it as a signal — not just a number." **Why this works:** A 79% first-click success rate means nothing to a CFO without a chain. This prompt uses the three-layer framework to translate a design result into the terms leadership tracks — retention, churn, or revenue — so the readout earns attention instead of polite acknowledgement. **Best for:** - preparing a leadership presentation after a research or testing sprint - any situation where design results need to travel beyond the design team - connecting a single strong metric to the business outcome it supports --- *Glare Framework · glare-lead-business-goals · Lead Area* *Handoffs: glare-lead-mapping · glare-lead-workflows · glare-lead-results · glare-focus*