The impact / intent matrix for digital design

Strategists love little more than a good matrix to guide planning and execution. Two of the most famous from the 20th century relate to prioritisation and decision-making.

The first, most commonly known as the ‘Eisenhower Principle’ (named after the 34th President of the United States) is based on one of his more famous quotes: "I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent." Learned in the heat of combat, Eisenhower took this strategic military mindset into his presidency and applied it to a very different set of challenges.

The second, an evolution of the first, was championed by American businessman, author and speaker Stephen Covey, in his best-selling book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (20 million copies had been sold by the time of Covey’s death in 2012). In the Chapter put first things first, Covey illustrates how the Eisenhower principle can be applied to personal productivity, time management and business impact. Today, ‘The Eisenhower Principle’ and ‘Covey’s Matrix’ are used almost interchangeably and taught in most MBA courses across the world to new generations of ambitious young executives.

What Eisenhower learned on the battlefield, Covey brought to the enterprise, where urgency isn’t the only thing which can distract from importance. In organisations, lots of things can distract from important or impactful. Interesting unimportant activities can leapfrog uninteresting important ones. Unstrategic endeavours can get carried out by individuals labouring under the illusion that they are contributing to a greater goal. Unqualified or underqualified people can influence those around them to be busy fools, engaged in activities which keep them busy but have little or no impact. In the words of the peerless Sir Humphrey Appleby “they mistake activity for achievement.”

Nowhere is this truer than in the world of digital design, in all its flavours (websites, apps, products et al). I’m not sure exactly why this is, but my sense is that it’s because digital design often involves every department and layer of the organisation (with all of strengths and weaknesses that come with collaboration at scale), everyone has an opinion on design and a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

So, standing on the shoulders of giants, I’d like to introduce you to the impact / intent matrix for digital design. Covey’s Importance has been replaced with Impact, and Urgency replaced by Intent. The latter relates to the extent to which a project team has deliberated and scrutinised the decisions they plan to execute and includes considerations such as:

• Evidence-led – the basing of decisions on informed and established frameworks, peppered with business and customer knowledge, data and insight.

• Time – the time investment across the organisation made in reaching the best decision possible based on the available information.

• Resource – the seniority, qualifications and experience of the people involved in the decision-making process.

An activity will score high on Intent if it is led by senior people, due time and care is given to it, and it is performed according to established best ways of working. It will score low if a design decision is made arbitrarily, delegated to a junior member of staff, or made based on the opinion of the highest paid person in the room.

Ideally therefore, the impact / intent matrix for digital design will look something like the following:

While the activities which comprise Covey’s matrix differ from individual to individual, there are common prioritisation thieves, predictable patterns of human behaviour, which regularly find their way onto the wrong part of the chart. The urgent non-important quadrant often includes activities such as responding to emails first thing, meetings for their own sake, report writing and bureaucratic admin.

This author’s quarter of a century on the design coal face suggests that there are also predictable patterns of project team behaviour which lead them to the wrong area of the chart. In fact, such is the difference between the perspective and priorities of the user and the organisation that it is tempting for an organisation to significantly over-invest in areas which the user cares little for, and thus under-index on areas the user cares passionately for.

I beg you dear reader, don’t come for me. These activities vary from project to project and sometimes a thing which I’ve put in low impact should be in high impact. I get it, I really do. Your last project would have fallen apart if the autoplay video background hadn’t been there. I’m simply reflecting on the things which gain senior management time and attention and the things that don’t, most times.

It turns out your user didn’t watch your video hero shot, because they were too busy scrolling looking for what they wanted. They didn’t care if you used the square or rectangular version of your logo, because once they recognised it they knew they were in the right place.

And they really want their user journeys to be slick and efficient, answering their questions and dealing with their concerns. They want to find what they are looking for first time and directly. They want to understand what they are reading and be able to act on it.

There are all sorts of persuasion mechanisms which organisations can use to help them influence their user towards a desired behaviour. But top of all of those mechanisms is the simple idea that you give them what they want first. Everything else follows.