quantifying field study ROI

Question

I have the feeling I'm not the first person on this site to be in the position of advocating for mounting field studies for their company's software and being challenged to produce data ahead of time to substantiate the value of doing so.

Is anyone aware of historical data, academic study, or even anecdotal evidence that quantifies the return on investment from doing field studies? Ideally I'm looking for something along the lines of "reduced subsequent design cycle times by an average of 30%" or "customers who participated in field studies renewed their contracts at 150% the rate of other customers" - but I'll take whatever I can get. Thanks!

Answer 1

If you perform a Google search for "ux roi" you get a plethora of information on the subject.

One of the results is a video distributed by Human Factors International, which I've used before and enjoy how it is organized.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O94kYyzqvTc

This group has also put out a video, and associated article, titled "What Every CEO Should Know about Creating an Effective User Experience Practice" which speaks a bit to ROI.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3K-p6Qa5SDQ

They also have a page on their website titled "ROI Calculators"

https://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/roi.asp

Stepping away from this group, there are plenty of other examples:

UXMag has a Business Value and ROI section with multiple articles on the subject.

UXMatters has an article on the subject: How to Calculate the ROI of UX Using Metrics

An article at UXPatterns, UX ROI: User Experience Return on Investment, also cites several studies and quotes numbers from them as to the benefit of ROI.

The US Government's Usability.gov has a web page on the topic as well, which incidentally links to the first video I posted: Benefits of User-Centered Design