Christine: I knew I had something about this - and I found a great white paper/report by our friends at Adaptive Path that talks about the ROI of User Experience - and the stuff we do - you actually have to pay for the thing - but it is definitely worth the investment for your organization - I will just send you the executive summary - and a link to where you can buy the whole thing.
http://adaptivepath.com/ideas/reports/businessvalue/ ------ Leveraging Business Value: How ROI Changes User Experience<http://adaptivepath.com/ideas/reports/businessvalue/> Over the last few years, ROI has been sought as the "holy grail" of getting more headcount and credibility for Web design teams. By unraveling how to measure the value of Web design, ROI analysis contextualizes corporate decision-making and transforms user experience design into a real competitive advantage. *Download the Executive Summary (PDF, 84 KB) »<http://adaptivepath.com/ideas/reports/businessvalue/ap_businessvalue_summary.pdf> * Bad design decisions are not the fault of any one designer, manager, or developer; rather, they stem from an inability to understand the business value of the design process. ROI and other valuation techniques transform abstract design decisions into real business cases. This report will help you think about user experience in terms of business value. Too often, the business value of the Web is narrowly viewed the sum of two parts: increased online revenues, plus the cost reductions that technological efficiencies offer. Such thinking ignores the firm's entire relationship with its customers, and constrains Web design priorities to specific, short-term outcomes. Applying ROI methodology to user experience design helps to ensure that you're investing in high-value projects that touch many parts of the business — from marketing and customer conversion to order fulfillment and customer support. At the same time, if you approach Web projects with user-centered design principles, your site becomes a strategic lever for understanding the whole customer, influencing their online and offline behavior, and anticipating their future goals. This report provides frameworks and analysis that will help you to: - Understand how to choose high-value, high-impact Web development projects - Evaluate Web investments in the context of the larger corporate budget - Internally advocate for user experience as a competitive advantage - Optimize your business processes and organizational structure to better leverage your Web site --- Many in our field have long believed that a good user experience delivers business value. We have often seen how aligning product specifications with business objectives and user needs delivers a real competitive advantage, but -- outside of retail e-commerce -- we have rarely seen that value being measured and managed. Based on these beliefs and observations, we began a research project in May 2003 to answer the specific questions "How do companies currently use valuation methods, like return on investment (ROI), to measure the value of user experience?' and "What are the benefits of doing so?" We began with an expectation commonly held in the design field, that "measuring the ROI of user experience" would entail applying a general equation, and we expected that our research would reveal the elusive formula. We assumed that armed with this silver bullet, Web development teams would be able to prove their value and thereby garner more credibility and resources within their companies. Even more naively, some of our colleagues encouraged us to seek an answer to the question "What is the ROI of user experience," hoping for a specific value, like 500 percent or $234. While our research showed that valuation methods can help managers justify resource increases, it)s impossible to measure ROI for user experience with a simple equation that can be applied across a wide swath of companies and projects. Nor is there a specific number that represents the general value of user experience. *Although there is no silver bullet,* what we found was much more interesting. The impact of ROI extends well beyond its obvious benefits in making resource-allocation decisions. Our research revealed that using ROI and other valuation methods helps to evolve design competency within organizations. The valuation methods provide tools for developing and measuring a design strategy as a component of a larger business strategy: The ability to "value" user experience design makes it a visible and credible business lever on par with marketing, research and development, and channel strategy. As a result, applying ROI-measuring techniques to user experience investment decisions has a positive impact on how Web teams are structured and perceived within an organization. This explains many of the anecdotal problems that we have encountered at several conference sessions and panel discussions. We have seen successful Web strategies languish for reasons that were difficult to pinpoint. In almost every case, those firms made no attempt to forecast the future value of user experience design. It was viewed as an expense to minimize rather than an investment that ought to deliver a return. As a result, user experience design was "undervalued," and successful implementation was doomed by a lack of commitment and support. The five cases featured in this research study show how companies that take even rudimentary steps toward measuring the long-term value of user experience avoid such political pitfalls. They also tend to have Web development processes and organizational structures that better optimize the value of design. On Jan 25, 2008 6:00 PM, Jared M. Spool <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Jan 25, 2008, at 4:34 PM, Christine Boese wrote: > > > A fart in the wind? > > A fart in the wind, when well placed, can certainly matter. > > That said, it's the case that the quality of the interface only > matters in a selling situation sometime. > > Having just purchased a car for my 17-year-old, I looked for certain > qualities in the vehicle -- interface wasn't one of them. This car is > going to live its last year of its life under the control of my son. > He will do what it takes to learn its operation. I'll never drive it. > Price and reliability were far more important to me. > > Not all qualities are important to all people all the time. As much > as we'd like to think the ones we contribute are always drivers, > there are plenty of situations when they have no effect. > > Jared > > Jared M. Spool > User Interface Engineering > 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 > e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 > http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks > > ________________________________________________________________ > *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* > February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA > Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > -- ~ will "Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems" ------------------------------------------------------- will evans user experience architect [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------------- ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
