How bad UX wastes money – and where good UX saves it

Bad UX hides well: you never really see it in the company. At the same time, we are all familiar with these situations in our day-to-day work: You’d rather not create a ticket, it’s too complicated. You choose a technical workaround because you know that the direct route will produce an error. UX weaknesses are opportunity costs – you often don’t even realize what’s slipping through the cracks.

Eliminating such situations has great potential for companies. The first thing that helps is that there is no substitute for looking at things from the user’s perspective and systematically revealing where something is not working and why. Investing in human-centered design thus saves real costs. Well thought-out UX is not an optional extra, it is essential – for every UI and every company.

Six cases from our consulting practice

Shadow IT due to frustration: when employees prefer to open Excel

A company from the technical service sector had built a specially developed quotation tool to relieve the sales department. The idea was good, but the implementation was not.

The tool assumed that all relevant information was available at the start. However, this is rarely the case in sales, where a final offer is iteratively approached. The tool ignored this reality and demanded too much too soon. So the employees turned to Excel. Not out of spite, but because Excel worked.

The investment fizzled out. Complex systems were once again calculated in spreadsheets, quotation data ended up decentralized and could no longer be evaluated.

What would have helped:

• Observe the real sales process before the tool is built
• Carry out user tests with realistic scenarios
• Develop a tool that is adapted to the actual activities instead of following an idealized process

Error-prone due to overloaded interfaces: “Ordering” must be simple

An automotive supplier introduced an internal ordering tool so that specialist departments could place orders directly with the purchasing department. The tool showed the complete purchasing process – logically from the perspective of purchasing, but not from the perspective of mechatronics engineers, designers or developers.

Errors became more frequent, queries became routine, training was expensive and met with resistance. One sentence sticks in the memory: “If we had stuck with emails, it would have been just as efficient.”

The real problem was not the technology, but the perspective. The user interface was built from the internal perspective of the purchasing department – not from the external perspective of those who had to use it on a daily basis.

What would have helped:

• The specialist only enters the information they know – without process knowledge
• The system translates internally into what the purchasing department needs
• A tool with an intuitive process and process-compliant results

Dependence on tool experts: when knowledge becomes a bottleneck

A manufacturer of ERP software for the retail sector had been selling a tool for years that was not yet intuitive. Over time, individual employees on the customer side developed in-depth specialist knowledge – all the tricks, all the special ways, all the workarounds.

These “tool champions” took responsibility for operation, instructions and contact with the manufacturer. Their absence became a business risk. And when the manufacturer wanted to improve usability, it met with resistance from the customers themselves – because a better UX would have devalued the expert knowledge.

What helped:

• Understanding UX not just as a surface project, but establishing it as a process
• Involve the “tool champions” early on – as discussion partners, not as affected parties
• Invite “tool champions” to the usability test and offer communication about the future role when the tool becomes simpler

Portfolio management without an overview: Visualizing data in an understandable way

A global pharmaceutical company used a tool to manage its product portfolio – for research and development projects, company acquisitions and license agreements. A central location for strategic decisions, at least in theory.

In practice, the tool was technically flawless, but strategically useless. It showed correct, complete lists – but no visualizations that made connections visible. Synergies remained undiscovered, projects ran in parallel, resources were allocated twice. The data was there, but the basis for decision-making was missing.

What would have helped:

• UX research with a focus on portfolio and investment decisions
• Derive specific requirements from the user perspective in order to
  • Enrich visualizations with correlations instead of just displaying data records
  • Design interfaces that support executives and portfolio managers in recognizing patterns and synergies

Loss of consistency in communication: when the tool undermines the brand

We used a statistics tool that worked perfectly from a computational point of view – but the diagrams were based on two different rendering engines with different colors, different axis labels and inconsistent typography. We were only satisfied with the results of the tool, which we in turn presented to our customers, after extensive reworking. We did not extend the license.

What this shows:

• Apparently, no one on the manufacturer’s side had thought through the customer perspective – and this ultimately cost the manufacturer its customers
• If you promise quality, you have to make it tangible at every touchpoint – including in your own tools

When tools get in people’s way: Improvisation as a survival strategy

A warehouse management software for car dealerships – correct in its logic, complete in its process mapping, but built for large companies. It was simply not manageable in smaller workshops.

So the employees improvised: skipped steps, misused data fields, entered imaginary values. Everyone not only had to learn how the software works – but also how to trick it. This costs time and data quality, creates mistrust and an “invisible wall” between the head office and the workshop.

What would have helped:

• Software does not have to map company processes 1:1 – only the interfaces must be process-compliant
• Adapt operating sequences to the actual work context, not to process diagrams
• Working with use cases and involving all users from the field at an early stage

Conclusion: UX is substantial

Six cases, six industries, the same basic problem: tools that don’t suit the people who have to use them. The examples show that poor UX costs companies money, trust and efficiency.

What helps?

It is important to find the right places in the company where resources are being wasted. A closer look at the users, their tasks and their requirements helps here. If you want to optimize interfaces, the path is clear: Functioning user interfaces are created by understanding the context of use, specifying user requirements, developing design solutions from these and testing them as realistically as possible.

Curious? 

Do a weak-point scan with us and find out where well thought-out UX can help your company. We will be happy to advise you.

Dr. Jan Seifert works as Lead User Experience at UID. He has extensive experience in all phases of human-centered development. Depending on the project requirements, the qualified psychologist carries out the process himself, guides it or implements it. He specializes in the enterprise, industry and automotive sectors. He passes on his extensive knowledge and practical experience in talks and lectures. He is an active member of the User Research working group of the German UPA, the professional association of German usability professionals.