I've been a reader of Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox newsletter for years. And I almost always liked his tips for design and usability of websites. But in his latest issue, I think he went really too far.
Let's start with his own summary.
The average mid-sized company could gain $5 million per year in employee productivity by improving its intranet design to the top quartile level of a cross-company intranet usability study. The return on investment? One thousand percent or more.
He based this assertion on the following facts.
We have conducted an international study of intranet usability, running user tests with employees in fourteen companies to learn what worked and what didn't in a wide range of intranet designs.
I repeat: fourteen companies worldwide.
I'll skip most of the report to concentrate on the section "Productivity and Return on Investment."
We measured users' task performance for sixteen common employee tasks across the fourteen intranets. As one might expect, usability varied widely, and some designs supported much faster performance than others.
When salaries and overhead costs were taken into account, we calculated that a company with one of the least usable designs in our study would spend $3,042 per employee annually to cover time spent on the sixteen tasks we measured.
In contrast, the average company would spend $2,069 per employee per year, and a company that was among the best in usability would spend $1,563.
Then he multiplies these numbers for companies with 10,000 intranet users, and concludes that such a company would reduce its intranet costs from $30.4 million to $15.6 million by investing about $500,000 in usability.
Are they any arguments given to justify those claims? None. Nada.
But wait, here comes the *funniest* part.
If we improved all the intranets in the world to the usability level achieved by the best 25% in our study, the world economy would save $311,294,070,513 per year for the sixteen test tasks alone. Adding the likely savings from company-specific tasks leads us to an estimated $600 billion in total annual productivity improvements. This level of intranet productivity is a modest goal; we could realistically achieve it with an investment of about $31 billion per year in intranet usability.
Assuming further usability improvements -- up to the very best level we found for each study task -- could save the world economy $1.3 trillion per year when we include estimated improvements in company-specific tasks.
Let me repeat. Based on user tests at fourteen companies, Jakob Nielsen extrapolates that the world economy could save $1.3 trillion per year by investing on intranet usability.
I've seen in the past some ridiculous reports coming from market research companies, but this one is truly amazing.
Source: Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, November 11, 2002
5:42:10 PM Permalink
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