Notes from The ROI of UX: Proving the Value of User Experience Design

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Last week, I had the privilege of presenting to the Austin Usability Professionals Association (UPA) about what we as user experience practitioners can do to prove our value and increase our client’s appreciation of our unique expertise.   These notes summarize the talk I delivered at that meeting.

“Each time I visit a conference I hear the same problems faced by UX professionals.  Not the never ending search for a perfect interface, the perfect user flow, or a usability test that passes without incident.  Most commonly it is ‘If I could only get the budget, my CEO just doesn’t listen to me in meetings, they seem to switch off and just don’t understand my point of view’.  In the majority of cases this is probably your problem, not theirs.”

- Alastair Simpson, former sales manager turned user experience professional

What does “Proving the ROI of UX” mean?

The title of the presentation comes in 2 parts.

What is ROI?

As we all know, returns are what you get back.   Investments are what you put in.  So ROI is the measurement of what you get back minus what you put in, often used to compare one potential investment to another.

What is UX?

An article on UXmatters entitled The Five Core Competencies of UX Design specifies a handful of skills that many UXDs offer.  On inspection, I found the list to be quite incomplete.

Recently asked to describe what a user experience designer does in less than 7 words.  I could only narrow it down to 16: A UX Designer designs or enhances products, services and environments based on a holistic consideration of the user’s perspective.

Pulling it all together, the tactics described in my presentation are intended to help you prove the ROI of UX.  To me, that means:

Proving to our clients and potential clients that designing their products or services with a holistic consideration of the user’s perspective will reap larger returns than other potential business investments.

5 Ways to Prove the Value of UXD

My goal is provide a simple set of tactics that you can start using tomorrow to prove the value of user experience design to your clients or stakeholders.

1. Understand your target. Just as you do when designing an experience, you must take a critical look at the different type of people to whom you are trying to prove.
   • Triage the people within your organization and react accordingly.  Identify:
     • Decision makers, key influences, and those who hold the purse strings. These are the people whose opinions matter most.
     • Likely advocates of UX (research team, perhaps?).  Build strategic alliances with them; Word of mouth promotion increases your credibility.
     • Detractors.  Not everyone will understand the value of UX at first, but it’s important to recognize whether (or NOT) aperson’s opinion is integral to your overall success.  Don’t waste time or emotion trying to prove yourself or your role to someone whose opinion doesn’t really matter in the end.
   • Put yourself in their shoes.  Ask yourself a few key questions about those who you are trying to convert.  What does their boss harp on the most?  What metrics are they responsible for?  What is their academic background?  What is their career history?
   • Focus on changing beliefs.  At ProductCamp Austin, Sharon Drew suggested that the only way to change behavior – say, incite an investment decision – is to change the underlying beliefs which drive the status quo.  Do your clients or stakeholders believe the same things you do regarding user experience?  What would it take to alter their beliefs?
   • Watch the lingo – both theirs and yours.
     • Talk their talk.  What is your client’s big buzzword: Organizational efficiency?  Market penetration?  Brand recognition?  Reduced abandonment?  Observe the language they speak so that you can phrase things in their terms.
     • Beware the geek speak.  Trying to prove that you’re the smartest person in the room never pays off, and you probably don’t need business decision-makers to understand every detail of the technical implementation.  When you allow yourself to indulge in geek speak, you run the risk of losing your client’s attention (recognize that familiar glossy-eyed look?) or far worse – making them feel defensive.
2. Have a variety of tools & know how to use ‘em.
   • Don’t become a one-trick pony. Asked in a past gig to research the use of Twitter, I dove in head first. Soon, I realized that our company needed an account – so we set one up and started tweeting.  Soon, I was recommending Twitter to everyone.  But it wasn’t long before I sensed them — the rolling eyes, that is.  I’d become “the Twitter girl”.  Twitter had become my go-to tool.  Something I was always expected to advocate.  I was (gasp!) a one-trick social media pony.  So, my advice to you is to keep your toolbox diverse. Be sure to consider your complete set of tools each time you diagnose a UX problem or opportunity, and you’ll retain your credibility.
   • Develop expertise in the quick and dirty, because clients will only invest in safeguards in accordance with the level of the risk they perceive.  As you know, there’s a relationship between risk and reward.  Look at the recent financial collapse or the Gulf oil spill – both are the result of risky behavior.  The thing is, has those companies succeeded with their cut corners, they would have been rewarded by lower costs and increased profits.  The lower the perceived risks, the less a business will want to invest in removing those risks.  Therein lies the natural conflict; As practitioners, we are often caught up the science of our field.  We learn the formal methodology and insist on statistical significance.  But often, our client’s budgets cannot tolerate our taste for precision.  Therefore, I believe we have a responsibility to study low fidelity approaches alongside the more elaborate.  If you can glean useful information from low-investment research, your client is much more likely to offer an adequate budget the next time.
   • Know how to sell your steps. Describing her approach to pitching new business, well-known UX designer Whitney Hess explained, “I win clients over with my process.” (source)  Each step, artifact, or phase you recommend comes between your client and his desired outcome: the project’s completion.   You must be able to describe the purpose of each step, succinctly and meaningfully.  And you’ve gotta have the adaptability to drop certain steps when you can’t build a case for them.
   • Match research methodology to desired outcome. In my case, I’ve often dealt with clients who want to use usability testing to test the aesthetics of a concept.  I felt very empowered when I came across a new way to assess desirability so that I was no longer just saying, “that’s wrong.”
   • Case in point: I once interviewed a candidate with a background at an agency whose clients often refused to invest in usability testing.  Because his colleagues on the account side hadn’t seen a lot of usability testing, they weren’t well equipped to tout its value.  So, he & some other UX colleagues created a proposal for a mobile usability lab.  Cost was covered by the first client – after that, the services actually brought RETURNS.
3. Map UX artifacts to business goals.
   • Key assumptions:
     • Hard & fast business goals have been documented. If necessary, go multiple rounds to document the goals of the business or organization.  This is truly a stitch that will, in time, save nine.  Solid goals are integral to the success of a project (and its measurement).
     • Clients see UX artifacts.  Integrate the client in your pre-deliverable deliverables as often as possible.  Share every artifact you produce.  Diagrams, narratives, sketches, wireframes: these are all tools for reaching alignment, but their power is limited to their sphere of exposure.  The more you share these artifacts, the broader the alignment.  Some may argue that “this particular client just doesn’t get wireframes” but I challenge you to change that by being a good teacher and communicator.
   • Examples include:
     • Mental modeling/content strategy.  Use a spreadsheet or mindmap to brainstorm content strategy, in the following order: Business Goals -> Users -> Desired Behaviors -> User Objections -> Content Component.  You’ll create a persuasive user experience which is basically a strategic argument against the user’s possible objections.
     • Multiple facets for usability.  Paul Sherman of ShermanUX in Austin recommends reporting on usability severity, impact to brand equity, and impact to revenue or (other key performance metric).  (source)
     • Map wireframes and other UX visualizations back to business goals.  Consider whether annotations and color-coding might be useful layers to show top-level stakeholders how business goals are being met within the user experience you’re planning.
4. Drop the superiority complex.
   • Frak ‘em? Speaking of Paul Sherman of ShermanUX, he once wrote:
     

     “…most of us stumbled onto this field and found it a fantastic lens through which to project our ethical expression onto the world. UX is a place to be a force for good. How awesome is that? Answer: quite awesome indeed. So why *wouldn’t* everyone see our opinions as correct?

     “But there’s the rub. Our moral certitude gets in our way. In other words: UX’ers belief in our own rightness is quasi-religious. Hey, if that’s the case then there’s no need to persuade others of our rightness; we *know* we’re right. And if they don’t believe us, frak ‘em.” (source)

   • Frakkin’ ‘em, however tempting, just doesn’t fly. As cliche as it may sound, differing vantage points provide creative tension that make the work better.
   • There is often no one “right” way. What that seems “right” from the user experience perspective might require huge technological investments.  It might mean cutting a stream of low-quality leads against which sales staff has been hired.  There are business decisions and implications that reach far beyond our limited view of the world.
   • Like coaches offering guidance, reminders, and encouragement from the sidelines, most of us aren’t the ones actually playing the game.  The final business decisions are not ours to make – the belong to our clients.  Instead, our job is done when we have issued recommendations, disclosed risks or taught best practices.   In fact, our performance is sometimes better measured by the degree to which we’ve informed and communicated with our clients than it is by the experiences we plan.
   • Besides, who wants to work for a client that blindly trusts advice? No respectable client would listen to every recommendation tossed his or her way.  You want to work for people who question things; Without them, your brain would turn to mush!
   • Challenge yourself to replace superlatives like “right” and “best” with more substantial and less biased rationale to support your recommendations.
5. Run a strong defense. Keep each of things things in mind to retain the credibility and differentiation you’ve been working so hard to attain.
   • Your key differentiation is your ability to predict problems with impartiality.  Offering creative solutions is important, but the second that you cross over into overselling your solutions, you lose your credibility as the unbiased identifier of risk.
   • Tread carefully on other’s roles.  Beware of offering non-user-centered critique of creative work.  If your voice becomes just another in the crowd, you don’t stand a chance of being heard — after all, you’re not the client.  Protect your place at the table by staying user-centered — and if you MUST share your personal opinion, do so with a disclaimer.  ”This is just my personal opinion, but…”
   • Never let your team take a UX/usability risk without warning. Risks are related to reward, so don’t let your risk-averse nature overpower potential opportunities.  At the same time, there’s no need to keep it all in.  Make it your mission to anticipate potential problems and communicate them to stakeholders so that there are no surprises come testing.  Sometimes, one warning isn’t enough.  Be sure you’re heard.
   • Cite examples; reference internally acquired knowledge where possible.  Where not possible, reference published works.  It might feel geeky at first, but it’s important for your teams and especially your executives to know that your heuristic analyses are informed by more than just instinct.
   • Always remind your teams that real data resolves disputes.  Be equipped to advise on how to get that data.  Become the gateway to real data for your organization.

Recommended Reading

During my research, I found the following sources very valuable – maybe you will too?

• How UX can get the budget they want on Clunky
• Selling what we do on Johnny Holland
• Selling usability on UserFocus
• Selling UX on UXmatters
• The Five Core Competencies of UX Design on UXmatters

Did you attend the presentation?  Whether or not you were there, I’d love to hear your thoughts.  Please leave a comment.

See also

1. The ROI of UX: Proving the Value of User Experience Design
2. Notes from Austin UPA: A Panel Discussion on User Research Technologies
3. Why Users Don’t Get Your Design: Inattentional Blindness