Business Thinking for Designers

An inside-out approach to experimentation
The inside-out approach to experimentation is one I regularly 
use. But beware! It involves the question so many designers 
dread: “What’s the ROI of this?”
Return on Investment (ROI) is one of those conversations many 
designers aren’t prepared to have. So let’s break it down. When 
organizations invest in making new products, executives and 
sponsors want to know four things:
• What do I get?
• How much do I get?
• When do I get it?

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102 
Create conditions for design maturity
• How much will it cost me?
While executives expect to have answers for these four 
questions, rarely do they ask them and that creates a major 
communication gap.
When ROI conversations arise (and they will) it’s not only 
important to communicate if a design works, but also by 
how much. The degree to which a design is successful is an 
important factor in making decisions about investment. This 
is what your business partners mean when they ask about the 
ROI. 
Believe it or not, the easiest way to answer the ROI question 
is to start with math assumptions. Perhaps you’ve avoided 
math in your career. I did. But it’s going to be OK, because your 
responsibility is only to highlight when the math doesn’t add 
up, not to calculate it. Let me explain. 
Math must be used to calculate ROI. If math isn’t being used, 
your business partners are just guessing. There’s no way for 
you to calculate ROI on desirability factors if the product and 
business folks around you don’t have legitimate numbers for 
you to start with. I like to say, If math is being used, it’s your job 
to highlight how desirability is impacting the math. If math is 
not being used, it’s your job to highlight the risks of not using it.

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103 
Create conditions for design maturity
ROI calculations for digital products are pretty standard. 
From calculating marketing efforts to rates of retention, 
organizations use math to determine which solutions are viable 
or not. By framing experiments around ROI, product teams get 
scenarios of how well a design worked, which helps them make 
trade-off decisions.
You’ve stuck with me thus far, so let’s talk about how to crunch 
the numbers.