The Fear of Knowing: Why UX Metrics Make Teams Squirm

I had something personal happen the other day that unexpectedly increased my empathy for coworkers. A doctor suggested I get some bloodwork to investigate a cluster of symptoms I’d been having. The test would help determine whether something serious was going on… or nothing at all. I nodded politely, tucked the lab order into my bag, and headed out.

On the drive home, I seriously considered not getting the bloodwork.

Was this a rational decision? Of course not. It was fear. Getting the test meant I’d know, definitively, whether something was wrong. And once you know, there’s no going back. You lose the comfortable fog of denial. A very real part of me wanted to stay in that limbo — my own personal Schrödinger’s box of healthiness — because as long as I didn’t open the box, everything could still be fine.

That tension — wanting the truth but instinctively avoiding it — followed me straight into work. Ironically, later that day I found myself in a discussion about UX measurement. (Yes, I know. The time-honored tradition of turning personal moments into work reflections. But stay with me.)

Throughout my career, I’ve built UX measurement programs in multiple organizations, and I’ve always been puzzled by the resistance. Product managers devour telemetry data. Engineers instrument everything. We love signals... until we don’t. Something about user experience metrics, specifically, triggers hesitation, debate, and sometimes outright rejection.

“Why wouldn’t you want to know?” I’d think every time someone pushed back. Afterall, a SUS score or a UMUX Lite result is just a datapoint. It's a piece of information to help you understand how your product is performing for real humans. Why the anxiety? Why the defensiveness?

After my appointment, however, something clicked. I was behaving the exact same way. Faced with a simple test that would give me clarity, I wanted to look away. Suddenly the years of puzzled conversations made more sense. I had a wave of empathy for every PM, engineer, and leader who has ever squirmed when we start talking UX metrics.

A quick grounding: What is UX measurement?

One of the most common UX metrics is the System Usability Scale (SUS).  It's a ten-question, highly validated survey that yields a score from 0 to 100. It’s not perfect (no survey is), but it’s remarkably reliable and gives you an industry benchmark across thousands of other products.

My personal favorite is UMUX Lite, a shorter two-question survey that measures perceived usefulness and ease of use. It’s fast, lightweight, and tends to correlate well with SUS. Both instruments have decades of research behind them.

So if the tools are good… why the resistance?

1. Lack of understanding

For many PMs and engineers, experience-quality metrics are unfamilar. They sound academic. Without clear education on what they measure and how to use them, teams tend to dismiss them as “fluffy experiments.”

Launching a UX measurement program always requires storytelling and demystification. Once teams understand the mechanics and rigor behind these instruments, you can feel the tension drop.

2. The “subjectivity” problem

Even though SUS and UMUX Lite are quantitative, they still rely on people rating their own experiences. And for many, anything that isn’t clickstream data starts to feel suspiciously mushy.

But here’s the truth: user perception is the product. Experience is emotional, cognitive, contextual, and deeply human. So yes, we ask humans what they think. These metrics simply translate those perceptions into something structured and benchmarkable.

3. Fear of what the data might say

This is a big one. The one I felt in my gut when I thought about skipping the bloodwork.

UX metrics illuminate things teams already suspect but haven’t quantified. They tell you whether users find your product hard to use or downright painful. And once you know, you can’t unknow. It forces conversations about priorities. It challenges assumptions. It exposes where polish is missing or where experiences have drifted.

That can feel uncomfortable, especially when teams have worked incredibly hard on something. Data that confirms a problem can feel personal even when it isn’t.

4. Not knowing what to do with the signal

Even when teams accept the value of UX metrics, the next uncertainty pops up: What does this score mean? What do we do with it?

SUS and UMUX Lite are incredibly useful for benchmarking and identifying whether experience quality is trending up or down. They’re not meant to diagnose the root cause. That’s where qualitative research, observation, and customer conversations come in. The score points you toward the next right question, not the answer.

5. Fear of metrics being weaponized

There’s also a quieter, more political fear that shows up in many organizations: What if this data gets used against us?

UX metrics, when misunderstood or taken out of context, can become ammunition in roadmap debates, resourcing conversations, or performance assessments. Teams worry that a single SUS score might be held up as “proof” that a product, a team, or even an individual made poor decisions, rather than what it actually is: a snapshot of user perception at a moment in time.

This fear isn’t irrational. I’ve seen organizations where metrics are used to point fingers rather than guide progress. When that happens, teams understandably want to avoid collecting any data that could be misinterpreted or oversimplified. The fix is to create a culture where UX metrics are treated as shared accountability signals belonging to Product, UX, and Engineering together.

Circling back…

Avoiding the data doesn’t make the problems go away. It just keeps you operating inside a Schrödinger’s box of product health, where everything is simultaneously fine yet possibly not.

The most high-performing teams I’ve worked with embrace UX measurement because it sharpens decision-making. It provides before-and-after clarity and helps with prioritization.

And yes, after my moment of existential avoidance, I took my own advice. I got the bloodwork done. Thankfully, it was normal. The only thing scarier than knowing had been not knowing.

UX measurement is the same. Fear is normal. Open the box anyway. Get the data and use it to make your product better.

P.S. If you’re curious about UX measurement and want to explore more rigor and depth than you ever imagined existed on the topic, head to Jeff Sauro’s MeasuringU blog: https://measuringu.com/blogs/. It’s the best resource I know for grounding yourself in the science behind UX metrics.