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Is including user experience in project development worth the time and resources?If so, how can you determine and communicate back the value of following a user-centered design (UCD) approach to your organization?When talking about the benefit of UCD, you can discuss success measures in terms of measuring user performance and satisfaction as well as calculating some of your return on 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 at least 50% of a programmers’ time during the project is spent doing rework that is avoidable. Following UCD best practices, helps to identify challenges upfront so that a solution can be found early.
By building a skilled team and following the best practices outlined on this site, you can avoid several of the top 12 reasons IEEE identified for why IT projects fail:
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 doesn’t fit your users or organizations goals.
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 UX upfront and also discussing success in terms of user performance and satisfaction measurements.
Weinschenk, in her white paper Usability: A Business Case , outlines three useful equations for calculating cost savings related to:
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 |
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Improve Performance |
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Identify Specific Targets for Each Measurement You Choose to Improve |
Increase Exposure |
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Improve Credibility |
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Reduce Resource Burden |
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Increase Sales |
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