ROI Design Calculator

The Problem

Designers lose budget conversations because they speak in craft and stakeholders speak in money. The brief was a tool that translates. The hard part isn't the math — it's knowing which numbers stakeholders actually trust. Industry benchmarks get challenged immediately unless they're citable. That's the core design problem this tool is solving.

The Decisions That Mattered

The output had to sound like finance, not design. The tool translates UX changes into revenue, savings, payback period, and total business value because those are the units stakeholders already use to make funding decisions.

Benchmarks needed to be defensible by vertical. Generic industry numbers get challenged fast. I chose industry-template benchmarks over blank inputs because a model only works in the room if the assumptions can be explained and cited.

The report matters as much as the calculator. A designer needs to walk into the budget conversation with a board-ready model, not a screenshot of a form. The workflow ends in an argument stakeholders can read, question, and reuse.

What I Built

A financial modeling tool that turns design improvements into business cases: revenue upside, operational savings, implementation cost, payback period, and ROI. The interaction is structured around assumptions because the credibility of the model depends on showing where every number came from.

What I Haven't Solved

The benchmark data problem is real. Generic stats get dismissed. The tool only works if the numbers are defensible. That tension is partially solved — not fully.

Outcome

The calculator gives designers a defensible financial model for budget conversations: not "design is valuable," but what value, where it comes from, what it costs, and how quickly it pays back.