Adoption can be designed for, measured and managed.
Our approach connects strategic intent to measurable evidence — a research-based model, a process that traces value, and the operating rhythm that keeps it honest.
Built through an Industrial PhD, developed with LEGO, Vestas, Ørsted, Salling Group and TORM.
Use can be hollow.
Hollow means empty inside — something that looks whole and solid from the outside, but has nothing at its centre. Hollow Use is use that looks right on the surface but is empty of real, value-creating work: the user is logged in, present, perhaps even clicking around, but the core action the system exists for is missing.
It never lowers the login count. That is why no usage dashboard can find it — and why, when use is mandatory, the question “are they using it?” cannot answer the question management is actually asking.
One model. Three complementary dimensions.
In 2006, Burton-Jones and Straub showed that rich measures of usage explain almost three times more variance in performance than lean ones — logins, activity counts, time in system. They named three dimensions — system, task and user — but no way to measure them.
That translation is our contribution. We made each dimension measurable, so you stop assuming your product works and start knowing.
Is the product alive?
The digital product’s vital signs. Just as a physician reads a patient’s vitals to understand the body’s most fundamental functions, Heartbeat Data shows whether the product is being reached, whether its value-creating capabilities are actually activated, and how use develops over time. The Heartbeat Metrics that produce it are defined product by product.
A healthy heartbeat does not mean the patient is healthy — and strong usage signals do not mean the product is delivering business value.
How is it to work with?
Employees’ perceptions, motivations, confidence, frustrations and workarounds while doing their work: whether they understand the product, whether it supports the job, and where the friction sits.
This is where Hollow Use explains itself — telemetry sees the gap, people tell you why it is there.
Is it worth it?
Whether users’ activities contribute to organisational objectives, whether the expected business benefits are emerging, and which outcomes need attention.
Together, the three explain how the system is used, how it is experienced, and whether the intended value is being realised.
It tells you whether to pivot or persevere — and how much of the value you were promised is not coming back. That share is the Lost Value Factor.
How do we know whether our digital product is delivering the business benefits it was intended to deliver — when usage is mandatory?
Four years inside the black box.
We opened it in an Industrial PhD — Designing for Adoption Management: Opening the Black Box of Mandatory Software Use — developed, validated and refined with:
Evonate was founded by Thomas Ove Rasmussen. The research was carried out through Cecilie Caroline Falch’s four-year Industrial PhD, with Thomas as industrial adviser and deeply involved in the work day to day. It was a close research collaboration, not arm’s-length supervision. Their collaboration continues in the development of the methods and across selected projects.
Monitor continuously — or check once.
We run FARO in one of two ways: as an integrated part of your operating model, feeding the Product Fit Rhythm at the cadence of your adoption battle rhythm — or as a one-off diagnostic of a system already in use, which is also the natural place to start.
Make FARO part of how you operate.
Adoption is steered continuously rather than reviewed after the fact. All three dimensions feed the rhythm, and the instruments run on a cadence instead of as a one-time exercise.
Start with a single diagnostic.
One Employee Experience Survey — 360° PULS reads all three FARO dimensions as your people experience them: whether the product is delivering the value it was meant to, how much is quietly leaking, and the extent of Hollow Use. No operating model, telemetry or battle rhythm required.
An instrument for each dimension.
We built one instrument for each dimension — a method, two surveys and a workshop. This is what each of them puts in your hands.
Adoption Metric Trail (AMT)
A traceability playbook with a canvas. It builds an unbroken trail from the one business benefit that matters most, through the value it rests on and the behaviour it requires, to the metric that proves it.
What it producesA prioritised set of leading metrics, each with baseline, target and cadence — and each traceable, in one line, back to the business benefit, or benefits, it serves.
Employee Experience Survey — 360° PULS
One survey that reads how a mandatory system is actually experienced, across the ten things our research found matter most — usability, confidence, job-fit, data quality, workarounds. Built on the Adoption Diagnostic Assessment model.
What it producesA 0–100 Experience Feedback Index — with a confidence interval, so you can defend it — broken down by role, region and experience. The pains in users’ own words, the Lost Value Factor quantified, and recommendations and improvement ideas ready to prioritise.
Employee Feedback Survey — FOCUSED PULS
The lightweight alternative to the full 360° diagnostic — a fast read on how a single system, feature or device is experienced, and an early warning when something deeper is wrong.
What it producesAn experience score at feature or device level, the usability themes and user pains behind it — and recommendations and improvement ideas ready to prioritise.
Vital Signs Baseline
We sit down with your team and settle what the telemetry is supposed to mean: who should be using the product, which actions actually create value, and what healthy use looks like for each role.
What it producesThe product-specific Heartbeat Metrics behind the three vital signs — User Reach & Access, Feature Ignition and Cadence Patterns — and the reference ranges they are read against. Without them, telemetry is just numbers.
A score on its own is a number. Scores from the PULS instruments are read against the norms we accumulate across organisations — the comparison is what makes a number mean something, and it is what we bring to yours.
From strategic intent to measurable evidence.
FARO answers how do we evaluate adoption? The Adoption Value Trace answers the question before it: how do we get from strategy to the evidence FARO needs? Five steps, each with its own artefacts. The Trace draws on established strategy and design practice, and sequences it for a setting none of it was built for: work where using the system is not a choice.
DEFINE
Establish a shared understanding of the strategic ambition, the desired outcomes, and the challenge worth solving.
- Winning Aspiration
- Current / Future / Barrier
- Business Outcomes
- Challenge
UNDERSTAND
Identify how value is created for both the organisation and its users — and the behaviours it depends on.
- Benefits
- Value Map
- User Profile
- Organizational Profile
DESIGN
Translate intent into evidence: hypotheses, desired behaviours and the metrics that matter — and how success will be recognised.
- Desired Behaviours
- Hypotheses
- Metrics
- FARO
MEASURE
Collect and connect evidence across the three FARO dimensions to see how adoption is developing.
- Heartbeat
- Employee Experience
- Value & Benefits
MANAGE
Evaluate progress, find the leakage, and make informed pivot-or-persevere decisions. Adoption as a discipline, not an activity.
- Value Management
- Battle Rhythm
- Pivot / Persevere
- Continuous Improvement
Implementation is an experiment, not proof.
Every implementation rests on assumptions about how people will use the product, how well it will support their work, and whether that will produce the intended benefits. Those assumptions can be written as hypotheses — but they cannot be validated by implementation or usage alone.
They require evidence.
The Product Fit Rhythm closes the gap between the product you have and the product the business needs. It builds on Build–Measure–Learn, extended for mandatory environments — where the loop breaks, because usage alone cannot tell you whether the build worked.
BUILD
Turn assumptions and learning into hypotheses, interventions and improvements intended to improve fit.
MEASURE
Collect the evidence. This is where FARO enters — Heartbeat Data, Employee Experience Data and Value & Benefits Realization Data.
LEARN
Interpret it: are the expected behaviours, experiences and outcomes emerging — and where is value leaking?
ACT
Decide whether to pivot, persevere or improve — and set up the next iteration.
Evidence does not improve a product on its own. The Fit Gap Playbook is the method we use to turn a full FARO reading into a prioritised backlog of improvements and interventions — each one traceable back to the evidence that justified it. It is what carries the work from MEASURE into LEARN and ACT, supports the decision to pivot, persevere or improve, and sets up the next turn of the rhythm.
The cycle then continues.
The conditions that decide whether any of this works.
Successful adoption depends on more than technology, implementation or individual tools. Four organisational conditions have the greatest influence on an organisation’s ability to design for, measure, manage and improve adoption — and each has a supporting tool behind it.
We don’t manage adoption through hope or compliance alone. We design the conditions for it.
Adoption Strategy
A set of hard, mutually reinforcing and integrated choices designed to induce users to take the actions required to realise valuable outcomes — thereby delivering on the Winning Aspiration.
Team Operating Model
A shared understanding of why the team exists, what it is accountable for, who contributes which capabilities, and how it works together — so that assumptions don’t quietly replace alignment as objectives and people change.
Adoption Operating Conditions
Whether your existing operating environment can carry adoption and value realisation over time. We are not asking you to replace your operating model. Only to see where it needs strengthening, across seven dimensions: scope and purpose, ownership, success metrics, ways of working, team structure, funding and adaptability.
Adoption Capability
The ability to understand, organise and eventually scale adoption management as a discipline. It cannot be bought or installed: organisations need to learn before they can organise, and organise before they can scale.
Strategy provides direction. The Team Operating Model aligns the people delivering it. Adoption Operating Conditions ensure the environment can support it. Adoption Capability builds the ability to learn, organise and scale it. For a product owner, they are also the four things worth asking your organisation for.
Adoption Operating Conditions, as an assessment or a workshop Building the capability, as an engagement
Four layers, one system.
Find out whether your digital product is delivering what it was meant to deliver.
- You know how much value is leaking — and where.
- You have a score you can defend, and something to compare it against.
- You know which experience gaps are costing you — in users’ own words.
- You have priorities backed by evidence, not opinion.
- You can make a pivot-or-persevere call — and show your work.
- What it is
- One Employee Experience Survey — 360° PULS, read across all three FARO dimensions.
- How long it takes
- Three to five weeks, depending on how quickly you and your respondents can make time.
- What you receive
- An EFI score with confidence interval and bands, the pains in users’ own words, the Lost Value Factor quantified, and recommendations ready to prioritise.
- Where it leads
- A pivot-or-persevere baseline — and the option to build the capability yourself.
Or write to info@evonate.dk
- Burton-Jones, A. & Straub, D. (2006). Reconceptualizing System Usage: An Approach and Empirical Test. Information Systems Research.
- Falch, C. C. Designing for Adoption Management: Opening the Black Box of Mandatory Software Use. Industrial PhD, IT University of Copenhagen.
- Falch, C. C., Krancher, O. & Hevner, A. Enabling Intellectual Control through Diagnostic Artefacts: An Action Design Research Study of Adoption Management in Enterprise Systems. Research paper, IT University of Copenhagen & University of South Florida.