Benefits of User Experience

Building Digital Success

Is including user experience in an IT project worth the time and money? How can you determine and communicate the value of following a user-centered design (UCD) approach in your organization? When talking about the benefit of user experience, you can discuss success measures in terms of measuring user performance and satisfaction, as well as, calculating some of your ROI.

IT Projects are an Investment

According to the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) 2005 research, roughly $1 trillion a year was spent on IT worldwide, with the U.S. government spending more than $60 billion on its roughly 1,200 civilian IT projects and an additional $16 billion on military IT.

In the Human Factors International (HFI) video, The ROI of User Experience, Dr. Susan Weinschenk notes that of those IT investments, up to 15% of IT projects are abandoned and programmers spend at least 50% of their time during a project doing rework that is avoidable. Following UCD best practices, helps to identify challenges upfront so that a solution can be found early.

HFI 10% Rule

HFI recommends following the 10% rules. The rules of thumb state that 10% of your IT staff should be user experience (UX) professionals and 10% of your budget dedicated to UX. By putting a larger emphasis on UCD principles and practices, you can make iterative improvements and avoid costly large scale rework that does not fit your users or organizations goals.

Learn more about our user experience design process.

Understanding the ROI of User Experience

At a minimum, success can be defined as the project not being abandoned and it finishing on time and on budget. However, you can go deeper by calculating the cost savings of doing user experience upfront and also discussing success in terms of user performance and satisfaction measurements.

Calculating ROI

Weinschenk, in her white paper Usability: A Business Case outlines three useful equations for calculating cost savings related to:

Errors
(# of errors) x (avg. repair time) x (employee cost) x (# of employees) = cost savings
Example: (2 errors/week) x (60 mins) x ($30/hour) x (100 employees) = $6,0000/week or $300,000/year

Cost of Development and Maintenance
(# of changes) x (avg. hrs/change) x (cost of developer) x (4, if late) = cost savings
Example: (20 changes) x (8 hrs each) x ($40/hour) = $6,400 if fixed early or $25,600 if changed late

Productivity
(time saved) x (employee cost) x (# of employees) = cost savings
Example: (1 hr/week) x ($30/hr) x (1000 employees) = $30,000/ week or $15,000,000/year

Defining and Measuring Success

In addition, there are some other ways to define and monitor success related to your goals. You can do so by identifying specific targets for various performance and satisfaction goals:

Goals	Measurements	Target
Improve Performance	Reduce number of user errors Increase ease of use Increase ease of learning	Identify Specific Targets for Each Measurement You Choose to Improve
Increase Exposure	Increase traffic/ audience size Increase number of return visitors when appropriate (retain users) Increase number of new visitors (attract users) Increase number of visits from search
Improve Credibility	Increase user satisfaction Increase trust in the system Increase number of visits referral
Reduce Resource Burden	Reduce development costs Reduce development time Reduce maintenance costs Reduce redesign costs Decrease support costs Reduce training needed Reduce documentation costs
Increase Sales	Increase transactions/ purchases Increase product sales

References

Contact Us

Get in touch with us on 614.432.4913 or email us to discuss your user experience requirements.

If you are considering engaging us, we strongly encourage you to familiarize yourself our user experience process and blog, familiarize yourself with our user experience services and benefits. The more you know about us, the more you will be able to have confidence in our ability to help you achieve your user experience goals.