“We conducted 24 user interviews and ran 3 usability studies this quarter.” Nielsen Norman Group offers that sentence as a textbook way to lose a budget argument. It tells leadership what a UX team did and nothing about what changed.
The research firm’s July 3 article says UX teams rarely lose these fights because their work lacks value. They lose because of how the work is reported. Usability test data and user quotes are valid, it says, but they do not tell senior executives how research affects the bottom line. Two languages are spoken in the same company, and UX has to speak the right one. Teams that cannot connect their work to business outcomes risk being filed as cost centers, and cut accordingly.
Two mistakes
The first is reporting effort instead of impact. The second is reporting UX metrics that leadership does not track. A CFO has no frame of reference for a System Usability Scale score, or whether 74 is good. A VP of operations cannot tie a task-completion rate to the quarterly targets they answer for. Those numbers, the article says, belong in the research report and not in a budget conversation.
It cites McKinsey research finding that more than half of companies had no objective way to assess the output of their design teams. In that vacuum, leaders go on gut feel or back the teams that can talk in their terms.
What leaders want to see
The article walks through how executives weigh any investment. Poor UX can suppress revenue, because friction in checkout flows and signup funnels causes drop-off. Every support contact carries a cost. Operations teams call contacts that exist only because the product failed the user “failure demand,” and a before-and-after count of contacts for a redesigned flow is, the article says, some of the most persuasive data a team can bring.
Rework is another cost. Problems caught in a design tool like Figma are cheap to fix. The later they surface, the more engineering time, QA cycles and sometimes full redesigns they eat. Design-caused errors such as missed transactions and wrongly submitted forms can create legal, compliance and financial risk. Retention counts too: track the share of users from a given week still active 7 or 30 days later, and compare cohorts before and after an onboarding change.
The article splits metrics into two kinds. Upstream ones, such as task success rates, error rates and SUS scores, show how the design performed. Downstream ones, such as support contact volume, conversion and churn, show what the work was worth. Teams do not have to drop what they already collect, but they need a bridge to the second kind. It suggests partnering with finance, product analytics, customer support or marketing for before-and-after data. Even directional data persuades if it is honest, it says, giving the example “Contacts about [feature] dropped 30% in the quarter following the navigation change.”
A UK agency, The Web Design Company, summarized the guidance in a July roundup and said it applies it to its own work. Every design sprint there starts with a measurable goal such as conversion rate, average order value or support ticket volume. If a UX recommendation cannot be linked to one, the agency says, it does not ship.
Sources
- Stop Reporting UX Activity and Report Business Outcomes
- Website Design in July 2026: CSS Border-Shape, AI Interface Design, and Why UX Teams Must Report Business Outcomes – London Web Design & Development Company | The UK Web Design Company Ltd
Sources
- Stop Reporting UX Activity and Report Business Outcomes – NN/G
- Website Design in July 2026: CSS Border-Shape, AI Interface Design…
