On Feb 10, 2008, at 5:26 PM, Alan Cooper wrote: > [...] ROI measures efficiency and, as Peter Drucker points out, > efficiency is no longer a very effective measurement of the success > of a business.
If the traditional view on ROI is a measure of efficiency, then we need to change that. I would agree that simply measuring efficiency is not accurate for software and I've got dozens of case studies to show that. For me, ROI, when it comes to software, should be measured with a number of variables, including: increased performance of the user, decreases in error, decreases in cost, increases in revenues, etc. When we redesign software, websites, and webaps, we establish some initial baseline measurements for transaction processes based on time, effort, and satisfaction. We measure the redesigned model based on these same metrics. This is how we generally determine ROI. If it's a site based on advertising revenues from page views, then we measure based on these previous measurements and include things like a reduction in the number of steps to complete the process and overall increase in page views. > In software, there is simply no reliable relationship between what > you spend on building it and what value you get. The appropriate > measure is quality out, not investment in. While I agree with this in theory, in reality most of the businesses we work with are still concerned about the bottom line and do appreciate showing ROI. I don't think we can always show ROI, but when we are able to, which is most of the time based on the variables I discussed above, there's a great deal of satisfaction from everyone involved. If I'm building for myself, I'm less concerned about measuring ROI—I'm more focused on my actual satisfaction with the end quality. When I'm building/designing for a client, I keep their business model and goals in mind along with a number of customer/user variables including behavior, goals, pain points, etc. and use those to try and determine some kind of success metric. Cheers! Todd Zaki Warfel President, Design Researcher Messagefirst | Designing Information. Beautifully. ---------------------------------- Contact Info Voice: (215) 825-7423 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] AIM: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Blog: http://toddwarfel.com ---------------------------------- In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not. ________________________________________________________________ *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
