HCD Methods

Value Statements

Value Statements align your whole team on the member outcome they intend to deliver next.

A Value Statement describes what your team promises will be true for the member once you finish the project. After finalizing your Value Statements everyone will be able to describe the ideal experience for your target members and contribute concepts and ideas for making that experience real.

You can use Value Statements to:

  • Focus your whole team on big problems and holistic outcomes for members, rather than a growing list of feature requests.
  • Bring member research insights and a robust market understanding together into an actionable and tangible statement about what target members will be able to do when the team delivers their work.
  • Agree early, on how the team will measure their success.

This Is What It Looks Like

Template Downloads

Value Statements Worksheet

Let’s Get Started

1 Diverge then converge on who, what, and why.

Referring back to your research insights and As-Is Journey Maps, generate many ways to describe each part of the Value Statement before narrowing your focus on a few descriptors to take into drafts.

  • Who: Get specific, describe the member in terms of their struggle today or what they are trying to accomplish.
  • What: What can the member do—that’s different, meaningful, and impactful—compared to today?
  • Why: Why it matters to the member (not USAA)? What’s in it for them: the benefit or eliminated risk?

download an example value statement

2 Create draft statements.

Work quickly and loosely to string together Who, What, and Why into draft statements. Discuss the merits of each as a group. Iterate.

Questions to drive your discussion:

  • Focus on the member. Are we focusing on the “right” member?
  • Is everyone clear about what the What means? Is the enablement clear? Does it fulfill an actual member need?
  • Is the What free of implementation (“How”) solutions?
  • Is the Why a benefit to the target member? Would she say “Wow! Thank you!” if we read her this statement?
  • Is delivering this outcome feasible in our given release schedule/planning period?

3 Finalize Value Statements.

After your team has reviewed and discussed your draft statements, choose 1–3 statements to revise and refine. Write them in complete sentences.

4 Diverge and add measures.

Come up with as many potential ideas to measure the value you describe before deciding on a few to evaluate your success.

  • Where can we monitor how well we’re delivering?
  • What metrics will we use to measure?
  • Over what period of time?

Watch Out

Make sure the measures can easily be related to the types of value you have described for the members.

5 Playback the Value Statement.

Gather feedback from the extended team and members about your Value Statements. Is this the right work for the right people right now?