Many teams overthink return-on-investment calculations for UX work. Treat these calculations as a way to estimate the strategic value of design.

Many UX teams complain that they aren’t brought into projects early enough, they don’t have enough funding, they don’t have enough UX professionals, and so on. Often, these kinds of problems come down to a lack of buy-in or support from leadership and a lack of UX maturity in the organization. Changing that kind of cultural perspective can take years.

Calculating ROI is a powerful tool for building buy-in because it can demonstrate that UX isn’t just good for users — it’s also very good for the business.

Unfortunately, many UX teams do not calculate the ROI for their work — often because they have anxieties about doing these calculations, and those anxieties hold them back. Let’s look at 3 common myths about calculating the ROI of UX work:

* The ROI of UX is all about money.
* The ROI of UX has to be perfectly accurate.
* The ROI of UX has to account for every detail.

The bottom line is to Treat ROI as Estimation, Not Prediction!