ABSTRACT
This chapter explains a free spreadsheet-based tool developed to help estimate the potential return on investment of an investment in user experience (UX) resources and activities on software or website development projects. It provides an overview of the usability engineering lifecycle, although wording has been slightly changed to reflect the use of the broader term “user experience” and the context of website development. The UX engineering lifecycle consists of a set of UX tasks applied in a particular order at specific points in an overall website development lifecycle. The UX design capabilities and constraints inherent in the technology platform chosen for the product are determined and documented. If the net benefit had been marginal or if there had in fact been a net cost, then it would have been well-advised to go back and rethink the proposed UX engineering plan, scaling back to shortcut techniques for some tasks.
