Business Value of

User-Centered Design and

Usability
Jeff Johnson
UI Wizards, Inc.

Reasons to Invest in Usability

! Market Demand
! Cut Customer-Support Costs
! Reduce Time to Profitability
! Shorten Time to Market
! Risk Management
! Avoiding GUI Design Bloopers

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Market Demand
! Faster, easier installation & setup
! Easy to learn, use
! High responsiveness
! Tight product integration
! Greater productivity, usefulness

Market Demand (cont.)

! Flexibility to accommodate later
functionality
! Company brand, style identity
! Better visual appeal
! Support users who have disabilities

! Bottom line: “Retail quality” design

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Cut Customer-Support Costs
! E.g., CompanyX gets ~180,000
ARs/month
! x 12 months/year
! x $200/AR
! x 45% related to UI and user
requirements
! Potential savings: $194 M/year

Reduce Time to Profitability

Time to profitability

Expenses
$$$
Revenue

Time to market Time

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Reduce Time to Profitability
Time to profitability shortens

Expenses
$$$
Revenue
Moral:
Improving
usability
before
release can
shorten time
Time to market may lengthen to profitability
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User Centered Design Can

Shorten Time to Market!
! Gives programmers a clear target
" When you know where you’re going, you get there
faster
! Simplifies implementation
" Coherent, factorable design ! many commonalities
" Just the functionality users need
! Lowers cost of revision
" Putting more design iteration in revisions of object
model, sketches, low-fidelity prototypes, where it
costs less than changing product code or architecture
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Risk Management
! Introducing a new product or product
version carries risk: Will it succeed?
" However success is defined
! Management wants to minimize risk
" Risk is about predicting the future
! User-centered design & usability testing
are risk-reduction investments
" Like buying insurance

Risk Analysis Guides

Investment Decision
! Users internal or external?
! Users homogeneous or diverse?
! Use optional or required?
! Impact on operations low or high?
! Informational or transactional?
! Competition: little or much?
! Competitive advantage low or high?
! Strategic importance low or high?
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Risk Analysis Guides
Investment Decision
! Case 1: Aircraft maintenance shop
" Online manuals to supplement paper ones
# Users: internal, homogeneous
# Use optional; low impact on operations
# Informational, not transactional
# Competition N/A; no competitive advantage
# Strategically unimportant
" Risk exposure is low
# => Investment in usability can be low

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Risk Analysis Guides

Investment Decision
! Case 2: Photography equipment store
" Moving bulk of business onto Web
# Users: external, diverse
# Use optional; high impact on operations
# Transactional + informational
# Much competition; high competitive advantage
# Strategically important
" Risk exposure is high
# => Investment in usability should be high

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Prime Source of GUI Bloopers:
Anarchic Development
! No design
" “We don’t do design specs”
" But don’t really follow Agile rec’d practices either
! No UI standards or guidelines
" Publishers & media developers follow style-guides
" Many software developers don’t realize they are in
that business ==> amateurish products
! No oversight
" Lack of management or architectural control
" Result: no coherent model, many UI inconsistencies

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Avoiding Anarchic Development

! Don’t hack. Design, develop, test, iterate.
! UCD and Agile are compatible. Both value:
" Understanding customer/user requirements
" Enlisting task-domain experts (aka users)
" Devising conceptual model (“object model” in Agile)
" Analyzing task ==> use-cases
" Frequent testing & iterative design
! Fanatics in both camps need to adapt
" Agile proponents: up-front design is needed
" UCD proponents: the UI’s details will evolve
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Avoiding Anarchic Development
! UCD + Agile/XP

Cycle 2
Code Code UI Code UI
internal for for
objects cycle 2 cycle N

UI design UI design
for cycle 2 for cycle N

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Summary:
Reasons to Invest in Usability
! Market Demand
! Cut Customer-Support Costs
! Reduce Time to Profitability
! Shorten Time to Market
! Risk Management
! Avoiding GUI Design Bloopers

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References
! Time to Profitability
" Conklin, P. “Bringing Usability Effectively into Product
Development”, in Rudisill et al (eds), Human-
Computer Interface Design, 1996
" House, C. & Price, R. “The Return Map”, Harvard
Business Review, Jan-Feb, 1991
! Risk Management
" Altom, T. “Usability as Risk Management”,
Interactions, Mar-Apr 2007
! GUI Bloopers
" Johnson, J., GUI Bloopers 2.0, Morgan Kaufman,
2007
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Questions?

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