What is the General ROI or Return from UX Research?

Table of Contents: Select a Link to be Taken to That Section

Executive Summary

The ROI from UX research is very appealing.
We cover the implications of this ROI.

Introduction

Management loves to find the return on its endeavors. One very strong area of ROI is in UX research.

Our References for This Article

See this link if you want to see our references for this article and other related Brightwork articles at this link.

A General Estimate of UX Research ROI

UX Research ROI is explained in the following quotation from NNg.

Current best practices call for spending about 10% of a design project’s budget on usability. On average, this will more than double a website’s desired quality metrics (yielding an improvement score of 2.6) and slightly less than double an intranet’s quality metrics. For software and physical products, the improvements are typically smaller — but still substantial — when you emphasize usability in the design process.

For internal design projects, think of doubling usability as cutting training budgets in half and doubling the number of transactions employees perform per hour. For external designs, think of doubling sales, doubling the number of registered users or customer leads, or doubling whatever other KPI (key performance indicator) motivated your design project.

ROI should direct management decisions, and UX research has finally become a “hot area.” However, there is still far too much focus on getting past the UX research as quickly as possible and getting “back to development.”

Conclusion

The ROI from UX research is high. It both saves development effort and leads to a better and more durable product.