Cost-Justifying Usability, 2nd Edition

20.2.2 Costs of User-Centered Design

Most user-centered design techniques are relatively simple to apply. The major

cost is the time of the people who apply the methods. The methods chosen will

depend not only on the overall budget but also on the available skills and

experience, as well as practical constraints such as project deadlines and the avail-

ability of users.

Table 20.3 shows the typical range of effort and people required for each of

the methods, providing a total that ranges from 26 to 80 person days.

For some projects, even the lower end of this scale may be too ambitious or

beyond the available budget. In that case an essential subset ...