4 Reasons Your UX Investment Isn’t Paying Off by Hilary Little.
You can imagine why this caught my eye.
From the post:
“Every dollar spent on UX brings in between $2 and $100 dollars in return.”
We all know the business case for doing user experience work: investing upfront in making products easy to use really pays off. It reduces project risk, cost, and time while improving, efficiency, effectiveness, and end user satisfaction.
(Don’t know the business case? Read this or this. Or this.) But what if you’re investing in UX and not getting results?
There can be many factors behind an under-performing user experience effort. Anything from a lack of tools to the zombie apocalypse can wreak havoc on your teams. Addressing either of those factors are outside my area of expertise.
Here’s where I do know what I’m talking about. First, rule out the obvious: your UX folks are jerks, they don’t communicate well, they don’t understand business, they aren’t team players, they have such terrible body odor people stay 10 feet away …
Next, look at your organization. I’ve based the following list on observations accumulated over my years as a UX professional. These are some common organizational “behavior” patterns that can make even the best UX efforts ineffective.
Let that first line soak in for a bit: “Every dollar spent on UX brings in between $2 and $100 dollars in return.”
Then go read the rest of the post for the four organizational patterns to watch for.
Assuming you have invested in professional UX work at all.
I haven’t and my ability to communicate topic maps to the average user is poorer as a result.
Not that I expect average users to “get” that identifications exist in fabrics of identifiers and any identified subject is at the intersection of multiple fabrics of identifiers, whether represented or not.
But to use and appreciate topic maps, that isn’t necessary.
Any more than I have to understand thermodynamics to drive an automobile.
And yes, yes I am working on an automobile level explanation of why topic maps are important.
Or better yet, simply presenting a new automobile and being real quiet about why it works so well. 😉