Information Technology Reference
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credibility to the data you share with your stakeholders. It's much easier to com-
mit a multimillion-dollar redesign effort when more than one data set tells the
same story. Think of UX data as just one piece of the puzzle—the more pieces of
the puzzle, the easier it is to fit it all together and get the big picture.
We can't stress enough the value in going through your data firsthand. If
you're working with a vendor or business sponsor who “owns the data, ask
for the raw data. Canned charts and statistics rarely tell the whole story. They're
often fraught with issues. We don't take any summary data at face value; we need
to see for ourselves what's going on.
11.7 SPEAK THE LANGUAGE OF BUSINESS
User experience professionals must speak the language of business to truly make
an impact. This means not only using the terms and jargon that management
understands and identifies with but, more important, adopting their perspec-
tive. In the business world, this usually centers on how to decrease costs and/or
increase revenue. So if you're asked to present your findings to senior manage-
ment, you should tailor your presentation to focus on how the design effort will
result in lower costs or increased revenue. You need to approach UX research as
an effective means to an end. Convey the perspective that UX is a highly effective
way to reach business goals. If you keep your dialogue too academic or overly
detailed, what you say probably won't have the impact you're hoping for.
Do whatever you can to tie your metrics to decreased costs or increased sales.
This might not apply to every organization but certainly to the vast majority. Take
the metrics you collect and calculate how costs and/or revenue is going to change
as a result of your design efforts. Sometimes it takes a few assumptions to calcu-
late an ROI, but it's still an important exercise to go through. If you're worried
about your assumptions, calculate both a conservative and an aggressive set of
assumptions to cover a wider range of possibilities. Case study 10.1 is an excellent
example of connecting the dots between UX metrics and business goals.
Also, make sure the metrics relate to the larger business goals within your
organization. If the goal of your project is to reduce phone calls to a call center,
then measure task completion rates and task abandonment likelihood. If your
product is all about e-commerce sales, then measure abandonment rates during
checkout or likelihood to return. By choosing your metrics carefully, you'll have
greater impact.
11.8 SHOW YOUR CONFIDENCE
Showing the amount of confidence you have in your results will lead to smarter
decisions and help enhance your credibility. Ideally, your confidence in the data
should be very high, allowing you to make the right decisions. Unfortunately,
this is not always the case. Sometimes you may not have a lot of confidence in
your results because of a low sample size or a relatively large amount of variance
in the data. By calculating and presenting the confidence intervals, you'll have a
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