In this paper we describe our experience deriving evaluation metrics for a systems-level framework called Ripple that connects software engineering and usability engineering life cycles. This evaluation was conducted with eight teams of graduate students (falling under four types of development models) competing in a joint software engineering and usability engineering course to create a software solution for a real world client. We describe the challenges of evaluating systems-level frameworks and the approach we used to derive metrics given our evaluation context. We conclude with the outcome of this evaluation and the effectiveness of the metrics we employed.