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Save on Development

Where's the ROI?

When it is easier and cheaper to rebuild the basement of a building — when the construction has just started or when a couple of floors are already built? The right answer is: when architectural plans are made and no builders are involved yet. It's the same with software — the earlier changes are made, the cheaper they are. The cheapest fixes in software development are those that don't require code rework. And the most suitable phase for these fixes is modeling, design, and specification.

A significant reduction of changes during the development process allows savings up to 20% on development costs. User interface specifications minimize the number of unresolved issues about user interface because they're well thought out, consistent, and tested with users.

“The rule of thumb in many usability-aware organizations is that the cost-benefit ratio for usability is $1:$10:$100. Once a system is in development, correcting a problem costs 10 times as much as fixing the same problem in design. If the system has been released, it costs 100 times as much relative to fixing in design.” (Gilb, 1988)

That's why money spent on user interface modeling and design results in cheaper and faster development.

Business Cases

“Incorporating ease of use into your products actually saves money. Reports have shown it is far more economical to consider user needs in the early stages of design, than it is to solve them later. For example, in Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach, author Robert Pressman shows that for every dollar spent to resolve a problem during product design, $10 would be spent on the same problem during development, and multiply to $100 or more if the problem had to be solved after the product's release.” (IBM, 2001)

“Savings from earlier vs. later changes: Changes cost less when made earlier in the development life cycle. Twenty changes in a project, at 32 hours per change and [a minimal] hourly rate of $35, would cost $22,400. Reducing this to 8 hours per change would reduce the cost to $5,600. Savings = $16,800.” (Human Factors International, 2001)

“Usability engineering techniques are quite effective at detecting usability problems early in the development cycle, when they are easiest and least costly to fix. By correcting usability problems in the design phase, American Airlines reduced the cost of those fixes by 60-90%.” (Bias & Mayhew, 1994)

Read more business cases in the article “Return on Investment for Usable UI Design” by Aaron Marcus (published in the Winter 2002 User Experience Magazine).

Have a question? Feel free to contact us.

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