What Makes Them Click is a blog by Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D. for people who want to learn how to apply psychology to understand how people think, work, and relate. The blog focuses on applying the latest research in psychology to information, interaction, and experience design.

In “The Psychologist’s View of UX Design” she writes about applying psychological theories and research to design.

As an applied psychologist myself, it is good to see research and theory being used to improve design for digital experiences. Oh, and I also got my start in psychology at Penn State!

The clever folks over at Teehan + Lax, a user experience consultancy based in Toronto, Canada, decided to gamble with $50,000 dollars of their own money to test a theory: companies that invest in customer experience design will have better revenue, greater customer satisfaction, and therefore perform better in the stock market. They selected 10 companies that are known for the use of experience design on their sites and held their stocks for 365 days, then they looked at the value of their UEX portfolio relative to the broader market indices. Their portfolio did very well:

“In the 365 days we owned our stocks the value of the portfolio increased 39.37%. This outperformed the major indexes (NASDAQ 18.09%, S+P 9.47%, NASDAQ 100 26.81%, NYSE 14.67%).”

Designing for the customer experience is not just for the good of the customer, it is also for the good of the company. Designing great customer experiences definitely has measurable value.

http://www.uxmag.com/strategy/327/investing-in-ux