UX Glossary | R
RICE method
Also: RICE scoring
A prioritisation score from reach, impact, confidence and effort, devised at Intercom to rank product ideas.
RICE is a scoring model from the product team at Intercom. Each idea is rated on four factors and the score is reach times impact times confidence, divided by effort. Higher is better, and the point is to rank a long list on the same basis.
The four factors
Reach is how many people the change touches in a set period, such as users per quarter. Impact is how much it moves each of those people toward the goal, rated on a short fixed scale. Confidence is a percentage that says how much you trust the other numbers. Effort is the total work, usually in person-months across design and engineering.
Why confidence matters
It is the factor that makes RICE honest. An exciting idea backed by one interview should be scored low on confidence, which drags its total down until someone does the research. In effect the method rewards evidence.
Where it misleads
The numbers look precise and are not. Reach also favours anything that touches the whole user base, so work that matters enormously to a small segment, such as an accessibility fix for screen-reader users, can sink to the bottom. Keep a human override for that, and say when you have used it.
For a quick workshop view, an impact-effort matrix is lighter. RICE is for when the ranking has to survive being questioned by someone outside the room.