Diageo
UX Strategy Case Study · 2024

Diageo
Heartbeat

Designing a scalable decision intelligence system across 180+ markets

Role
UX Strategy & Design Lead
Team
4–6 designers & researchers
Scope
Multi-market analytics platform
My role on this project

I personally owned the KPI framework, component design system, and stakeholder alignment — managing a team of 4–6, running weekly critique, and bridging user needs with business requirements. Research was led by a dedicated researcher; I owned translating insights into design decisions.

01 — The Problem

Data existed everywhere.
Decisions were happening nowhere.

Finance, Marketing, and Supply each measured the same metrics differently. Leadership spent meeting time reconciling numbers instead of acting on them.

No single source of truth
KPI definitions varied by team and market
High manual effort
Analyst time spent on reporting, not insight
Data not translating to action
Reports existed, but decision pathways did not

"I don't need more data — I need the right data, in the right order, when I walk into the room."

Research participant · Regional Business Leader

"Every team shows me a different number for the same KPI. I spend half my time reconciling before I can even start analysing."

Research participant · Finance Strategist
The core decision framework
The thinking behind every screen
Three layers. Every component traces through all three. No orphan metrics.
01 — Outcome KPI
02 — Driver KPI
03 — Lever KPI
The Result
What the business is ultimately measured on. Lagging indicator. Reflects everything else.
Examples
Net Revenue
Gross Margin
Market Share
Why it matters
The number the board sees. If it moves, someone must explain why — immediately.
driven by
What Moves It
Leading indicators that cause outcomes to shift. Drop in revenue? Start here.
Examples
Distribution
Price Index
Activation Rate
What moves it
Distribution drops → revenue follows. Price rises → volume shifts. The diagnostic layer.
activated by
What You Act On
Tactical inputs teams can control. The only layer where action is possible.
Examples
Promo Spend
SKU Range
Trade Investment
What you act on
Every lever maps to a driver. Every driver maps to an outcome. Nothing unactionable.
The design implication
If a metric didn't map to an Outcome, Driver, or Lever — it didn't get built. That's why Heartbeat drove decisions instead of just displaying data.
02 — What We Built

A unified decision
intelligence system

Not dashboards. A decision system — every screen traces to one KPI, one question, one decision.

Users
Decision archetypes
KPIs
Outcome · Driver · Lever
Components
Reusable, scalable
Dashboards
Single source of truth
Decisions
Faster, informed action
Platform screens — live dashboards
03 — Decision Archetypes

Not personas.
Decision archetypes.

Defined by how each role interacts with data to decide — not by job title.

01 / Leader
C-Suite / VP
Board meetings, QBRs
Need
Pulse on business health without navigating data
Goal
Drive outcomes with confidence
02 / Strategist
Senior Manager
Planning cycles, pre-reads
Need
Trend analysis, forecasting, scenario planning
Goal
Shape what happens next
03 / Explorer
Analyst / Manager
Daily analysis work
Need
Deep-dive and root cause analysis
Goal
Find what's driving performance
04 / Citizen
Operational Staff
Operational monitoring
Need
Alerts and quick insights
Goal
Stay aligned without data expertise
04 — My Approach

From ambiguity
to architecture

01
Functional discovery
Mapped stakeholders across Finance, Marketing, Supply, HR. Defined decision archetypes.
02
KPI & decision framework
Structured KPIs into Outcome / Driver / Lever. Standardised comparators.
03
Curiosity mapping
Business questions → data requirements, before any wireframing. Our most valuable artefact.
04
Hypothesis & wireframes
Flows anchored in KPIs and questions — not page layouts or report names.
05
Co-design & validation
Validated the platform answered the right questions in the right order.
06
MVP build & iteration
Built in Power BI. Tested with real users. Iterated.
Heartbeat Product Map
70+ components across 4 interaction layers
Heartbeat product map
New
GB pilot
Scope+
05 — The Hard Part

Where the project
nearly stalled

Finance, Marketing, and Supply each had different definitions for the same metrics. Design reviews stalled — stakeholders debated data, not design.

The moment I stopped design work
In week four I paused all design output and ran a dedicated KPI alignment workshop. Unpopular — we had timelines. But unresolved definitions meant designing on sand.
  • Two-day cross-functional workshop — one definition per KPI, no exceptions
  • Facilitated tension rather than resolved it — made the cost of disagreement visible
  • Created a KPI decision log that became a governance document outlasting the project
  • Reframed from "whose number is right" to "which definition best supports the decision"

Three weeks added to discovery. But at launch, every market used the same definitions. Time lost in discovery saved many times over post-launch.

"I've been asking for this for three years. A single place where we all agree on what the numbers mean."

Finance Director, post-launch
What this produced
The KPI alignment process surfaced how different functions actually made decisions — directly shaping the archetype model and information hierarchy of every dashboard.
06 — How I Led

Team & design culture

RoleSizeWhat I directed
Visual Designers2Components, wireframes, system adherence
UX Researcher1Guides; I directed insight → design translation
Data Analyst1KPI definitions, metric validation
Product Manager1Roadmap & stakeholder framing
Decisions over deliverables
Every sprint started with: what decision does this enable? Prevented beautiful work that solved the wrong problem.
Critique as a design tool
Weekly critique with PM and a rotating engineer. The decision chain framework came from critique, not a solo sprint.
Make the invisible visible
Assumptions and dependencies on a shared wall. Prevented two major misalignments before they became rework.
Protect the research voice
No decision went to leadership without a linked insight — shifted feedback from opinion to evidence.
07 — Impact

What changed

3×
Faster decisions
Days to hours for review prep
Multi
Market rollout
Reusable component model deployed
One
Source of truth
Unified KPIs adopted org-wide
↓
Manual effort
Analyst time → insight not reporting
Before
✕Disconnected data, fragmented tools
✕Manual Excel reporting cycles
✕Inconsistent KPIs by team & market
✕No clear path from data to action
After
✓Unified decision intelligence platform
✓Automated pipeline, insight on demand
✓Single agreed KPI taxonomy org-wide
✓Outcome → Driver → Lever decision flow

"First time I've walked into a review without arguing whose numbers are right."

Regional Director, post-launch

"We actually make decisions now instead of preparing to make them later."

Finance Lead, 3 months post-deployment
08 — Reflection
This project was not about dashboards.
It was about enabling an organisation to think, measure, and act better using data.
The real design work was the framework underneath — shared KPI language, decision archetypes, component logic. That will outlast the platform.

What I'd do differently

  • Run the KPI alignment workshop in week one, not week four
  • Involve engineering earlier in component scoping — some decisions had to be reversed
  • Build a handoff protocol for markets joining post-initial rollout

What I'm most proud of

  • Shifting the client from "better dashboards" to "a decision system"
  • The KPI governance doc — still in use, still preventing the same arguments
  • A team that made principled decisions without escalating every call