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HEART Framework: Tag Your Roadmap for User-Centred Balance

Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, Task Success—Are You Measuring All Five?

(updated Jan 24, 2026)
Mark Holt Mark Holt
Frameworks (60)Prioritisation (34)
HEART Framework: Tag Your Roadmap for User-Centred Balance

This is one of RoadmapOne ’s articles on Objective Prioritisation frameworks .

Google’s HEART framework emerged from the UX research team—Kerry Rodden and colleagues—as a way to structure user-centred metrics. Before HEART, teams defaulted to measuring whatever was easiest: page views, revenue, uptime. These tell you about business performance and technical health, but nothing about user experience.

HEART provides five dimensions that cover the user journey comprehensively. It’s not a prioritisation framework—it doesn’t tell you what to build first. It’s a tagging framework that ensures your roadmap and metrics are balanced across user-centred dimensions.

TL;DR

HEART (Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, Task Success) is a tagging framework for Objectives and Key Results. By tagging in RoadmapOne, you can instantly see whether your roadmap is balanced across user experience dimensions—or whether you’re optimising one metric while others collapse. HEART overlaps with Pirate Metrics (Adoption ≈ Acquisition/Activation, Retention = Retention) and complements Kano (which categorises feature types by satisfaction impact).

The Five Dimensions

Happiness: Are Users Satisfied?

Happiness captures subjective user satisfaction—how users feel about your product. This is the dimension most likely to be neglected because it requires asking users rather than measuring behaviour.

Typical metrics:

  • Net Promoter Score (NPS)
  • Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
  • User satisfaction surveys
  • App store ratings
  • Qualitative feedback sentiment

Happiness is a lagging indicator—by the time satisfaction drops, damage is done. But it captures something behavioural metrics miss: users can be retained and engaged while quietly resenting your product, just waiting for an alternative.

Engagement: Are Users Actively Using the Product?

Engagement measures the depth and frequency of user interaction. Not just “did they log in?” but “did they meaningfully use the product?”

Typical metrics:

  • Session frequency (daily, weekly, monthly active users)
  • Session duration
  • Feature usage depth
  • Actions per session
  • Content consumption (videos watched, articles read)

Engagement differs from Adoption (first-time usage) and Retention (continued usage over time). A user can be retained but not engaged—they haven’t churned, but they’re barely using the product.

Adoption: Are New Users Getting Started?

Adoption measures how successfully new users begin using your product. This overlaps with Pirate Metrics ’ Acquisition and Activation stages.

Typical metrics:

  • Sign-up completion rate
  • Onboarding completion rate
  • Time to first value
  • Feature discovery rate
  • Activation rate (reaching “aha moment”)

Adoption problems compound. If new users don’t get started successfully, they’ll never become engaged or retained. Tagging Objectives by Adoption helps ensure you’re investing in the top of the user funnel.

Retention: Are Users Coming Back?

Retention measures whether users continue using the product over time. This maps directly to Pirate Metrics’ Retention stage.

Typical metrics:

  • Churn rate
  • Return rate (Day 1, Day 7, Day 30)
  • DAU/MAU ratio (stickiness)
  • Cohort retention curves
  • Customer lifetime

Retention is often the most important dimension—acquiring users is expensive, and value compounds when users stay. But retention is also lagging; by the time you see churn, the user already decided to leave.

Task Success: Can Users Accomplish Their Goals?

Task Success measures whether users can complete the tasks they came to accomplish. This is the most directly actionable dimension—specific, measurable, and immediately improvable.

Typical metrics:

  • Task completion rate
  • Time on task
  • Error rate
  • Abandonment rate
  • Support ticket volume for specific flows

If all your metrics are Task Success (“users complete checkout in under 60 seconds”), you’re missing whether users are happy, engaged, or retained. But if you neglect Task Success, nothing else matters—users can’t get value from a product they can’t use.

HEART as a Tagging Framework

HEART isn’t prioritisation—it doesn’t tell you whether to build Feature A or Feature B. It’s a tagging framework that ensures balanced coverage across user experience dimensions.

Tagging Objectives

Tag each Objective by the HEART dimension it primarily targets:

Objective HEART Tag
Increase NPS from 32 to 45 Happiness
Increase weekly active users from 40% to 55% Engagement
Improve onboarding completion from 60% to 80% Adoption
Reduce monthly churn from 8% to 5% Retention
Reduce checkout abandonment from 35% to 20% Task Success

In RoadmapOne, this tagging lets you instantly see roadmap balance: “We’re spending 40% of capacity on Task Success, 25% on Retention, 20% on Adoption, 10% on Engagement, 5% on Happiness.”

If that balance feels wrong—maybe you’re neglecting Happiness entirely—you can adjust before committing capacity.

Tagging Key Results

You can also tag Key Results by HEART dimension to ensure each Objective has balanced measurement:

An Objective like “Improve the checkout experience” might have Key Results across multiple dimensions:

  • Reduce checkout time to under 90 seconds (Task Success)
  • Increase checkout completion rate to 85% (Task Success)
  • Achieve checkout satisfaction score of 4.5/5 (Happiness)
  • Reduce checkout-related support tickets by 30% (Task Success)

If all Key Results are Task Success, you’ll know whether users can complete checkout but not whether they like it.

Overlap with Pirate Metrics

Pirate Metrics (AARRR) and HEART cover similar ground with different emphasis:

HEART Pirate Metrics Equivalent
Adoption Acquisition + Activation
Engagement (Partially) Activation
Retention Retention
Happiness (Partially) Referral
Task Success No direct equivalent

Pirate Metrics is funnel-focused (how users flow from acquisition to revenue). HEART is experience-focused (how users feel and behave across dimensions). Both are tagging frameworks; use whichever mental model resonates with your team—or use both.

Complement to Kano

Kano categorises features by their satisfaction impact: Must-Haves, Performance, Delighters. HEART measures the outcomes of those features.

A Must-Have feature (Kano) targets Task Success (HEART)—users can’t accomplish basic goals without it. A Delighter feature (Kano) targets Happiness (HEART)—users are surprised and pleased.

Tag Objectives by both frameworks to see: “Are we investing enough in Delighters (Kano) that target Happiness (HEART)?”

Connection to Customer Journey Stage

If you tag Objectives by Customer Journey Stage , you’ll see natural HEART alignment:

  • Awareness/Acquisition stages → Adoption metrics
  • Activation/First Value stages → Task Success + Adoption
  • Retention/Loyalty stages → Retention + Engagement
  • Advocacy stages → Happiness (NPS, referrals)

Multiple tagging dimensions create richer portfolio analysis.

When HEART Adds Value

Ensuring Balanced Measurement

The primary value of HEART is preventing tunnel vision. Teams naturally gravitate toward metrics that are easy to measure (page views, revenue) or easy to move (Task Success). HEART forces the question: “What about Happiness? What about Engagement?”

If your dashboard is all Task Success metrics, you’ll optimise usability while potentially making users miserable. If it’s all Happiness metrics, you’ll have satisfied users who can’t accomplish their goals.

For Mature Products

Early-stage products need signal on whether the core value proposition works—does anyone want this? HEART’s five dimensions are overkill when you’re still searching for product-market fit.

For mature products with established user bases, HEART ensures you’re not optimising one dimension at the expense of others. You have enough users to measure all five dimensions meaningfully.

For Portfolio Balance

When leadership asks “Are we investing enough in user experience?”, HEART tagging gives you a quantified answer. You can show the breakdown: “35% of roadmap capacity targets Retention, 25% Task Success, 20% Adoption, 15% Engagement, 5% Happiness.”

That breakdown enables strategic conversation: “Should we invest more in Happiness? Our NPS has been flat for two years.”

When HEART Falls Short

Complexity for Early-Stage Products

Five dimensions means five sets of metrics to track. For early-stage products, this is overhead that distracts from the core question: does anyone want what we’re building?

Start with simpler metrics—activation rate, retention, maybe NPS. Add HEART’s full dimensionality as you mature.

Doesn’t Prioritise

HEART tells you what to measure; it doesn’t tell you what to build. Knowing that your Happiness metrics are weak doesn’t tell you which initiative will improve them most.

Use HEART for tagging and portfolio balance. Use RICE , BRICE , or another framework for prioritisation.

Metrics Can Conflict

Optimising one HEART dimension can harm another. Aggressive onboarding (Adoption) might annoy users (Happiness). Gamification that boosts Engagement might frustrate users trying to complete tasks quickly (Task Success).

HEART surfaces these tensions but doesn’t resolve them. You need judgment about which dimension matters most in a given context.

Practical Implementation

Start by auditing current metrics. Which HEART dimensions do your current dashboards cover? Most teams find they’re heavy on Task Success and Retention, light on Happiness and Engagement.

Tag existing Objectives. Go through your current roadmap and tag each Objective by primary HEART dimension. What’s the balance?

Set targets per dimension. Based on your product stage and strategy, decide what balance you want. A product with churn problems might weight Retention heavily. A product with satisfied but declining users might weight Engagement.

Review balance quarterly. As part of quarterly planning, check whether your roadmap’s HEART distribution matches your strategic intent.

The Bottom Line

HEART is a tagging framework that ensures user-centred coverage across Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, and Task Success. It doesn’t prioritise—it balances.

Tag your Objectives and Key Results by HEART dimension in RoadmapOne. See instantly whether your roadmap is balanced across user experience dimensions or dangerously concentrated in one area.

Pair HEART with Pirate Metrics for funnel coverage, Kano for satisfaction impact, and RICE/BRICE for actual prioritisation. Together, they ensure you’re measuring the right things, categorising features appropriately, and building in the right order.

References