We are often asked by clients what are the benefits of employing user-centred design for our projects, so find below a summary of my main answers.
Benefits of User Centred design
- You produce better products – They work for their intended purpose and are validated by users and in line with commercial objectives.
- Cheaper to fix problems – By involving users, you learn what doesn’t work when it’s cost effective to fix it.
- Less Risk – identify issues before the product is built and launched and lower the risk of failure.
- Deliver the project to deadline – avoid scope creep by identifying the main dynamics at play and their associated challenges.
- Research brings insights – and uncovers opportunity to gain competitive advantages based on evidence, not opinions
- Products that are easy to use make more money – and they should be aligned with both the user and commercial objectives.
- User led projects get product to market more quickly – customers decide which route to follow, circumventing internal politics.
- Ease of use is a common customer requirement – and customers expect this now.
I read the other day that 15% of digital projects are abandoned, developers spend 50% of their time on avoidable re-work and the cost to fix a problem ends up costing about 100 times more than it would have done by getting it right in the first place.
Three of the top 10 reasons for project failure are badly defined requirements, poor communications between clients, developers and users and stakeholder politics. These are all avoidable evils that we can fix through good user centred design and following a solid user experience process for new projects.
