ROI of UX: A Systems-Aware Workshop for UX Teams

Reframe your value. Elevate your impact. Strengthen your strategic voice.

UX teams everywhere are feeling the pressure. Even when UX makes development smoother, reduces rework, and improves experiences, teams still struggle to make their impact visible and legible across the organization.

Despite delivering real value — faster development, better customer outcomes, fewer rollbacks, smoother launches — many teams struggle to demonstrate the ROI of UX in a way that resonates across their organization.

The challenge isn’t the value of UX. It’s the visibility of that value.

This workshop helps your team reframe and communicate UX’s impact using a systems-aware lens, giving you new language, evidence, and stories that are impossible to ignore.

What your team will walk away with

By the end of the workshop, your team will have:

1. A multi-layered understanding of your current value

Using the four orders of complexity from The Ecosystem Project, we map your UX practice’s impact across:

  • Transactional — Creating or redesigning objects, rule sets, tools, policies, or any artifact.

  • Functional — Functional improvements in experiences, service, products, or information.

  • Strategic — Organizational transformation, change, and capacity building.

  • Ecosystemic — Multi-layered impact in multi-stakeholder social or extra-organizational systems.

2. Clear, tailored measures of UX’s ROI

Together, we identify meaningful, organization-specific metrics across those four layers — not just UX metrics, but business and ecosystem ones.

3. A refined “UX value story”

Your team will co-create the stories leaders need to hear, rooted in evidence, aligned to strategy, and tied to the outcomes the business cares about.

4. A roadmap of practice changes to amplify impact

We pinpoint the behavioural, process, and capability shifts that would help your team demonstrate (and expand) your ROI.

Most teams are already contributing significant value across all four levels, the workshop helps to identify these impacts, how visible they are to others in the organization, and develop metrics and ways to communicate that value.

Who this workshop is for

UX and product teams who:

  • Struggle to make the value of UX tangible to senior leaders

  • Need clearer alignment across product, design, and engineering

  • Want to shift from transactional UX outputs to strategic, systemic impact

  • Are ready to articulate their ROI in ways that build influence and credibility

If your team is being told things like…

“Why do we need designers? Why can’t the devs just apply the design system?”

or

“Why do we need researchers? Can’t the Product Managers, who are talking to customers anyway, just do it?

… this workshop is built for you.

Book a Workshop or Start a Conversation

If your UX team is ready to articulate its value with clarity, confidence, and strategic depth, this workshop is a powerful place to start.

→ Book a call with Karyn (links to Calendly)

How the workshop works

This is a high-engagement, collaborative session delivered remotely.

Format

  • 2 two-hour sessions spaced about a week apart

  • Live facilitation by Karyn Zuidinga (NextWAVE Innovation)

  • Interactive exercises in Miro

  • Structured templates and toolkits you can reuse internally

Core Activities

  1. Assess Current State – Using a guided assessment that reveals where your UX value is clear and where it’s hidden.
  2. Identify High-Impact Opportunities – We explore your top UX “impact areas” and map their potential ROI across the four levels.
  3. Define Meaningful Metrics – We co-create a measurable story of UX value — not just UX KPIs, but business-aligned indicators.
  4. Build Your UX ROI Story – We craft the narrative you can take to leaders, partners, and cross-functional teams.

Why a systems-aware approach?

Traditional ROI discussions tend to stay at the transactional layer — conversion lifts, fewer support calls, faster releases.

But UX teams almost always create multi-layered value that extends well beyond the software interface.

A systems-aware approach uncovers:

  • The network of indirect value your team currently provides

  • How UX practice shapes decision-making

  • Where UX influences prioritization, culture, and alignment

  • The broader system dynamics that your team strengthens or stabilizes

This workshop shows teams not just what value they deliver, but how that value moves through the system.

Pricing and Optional Add-Ons

Pricing

The ROI of UX Workshop is offered as a premium, strategic engagement designed for UX and product teams ready to elevate their impact and strengthen their internal voice.

Workshop Fee

$5,000 USD
Includes:

  • A pre-session alignment call

  • A fully facilitated 4-hour workshop (delivered in 2, 2-hour sessions)

  • A post-session summary capturing insights, key measures, and next-step recommendations

This is a high-touch, fully customized session shaped around your team’s current state, strategic context, and organizational dynamics.

Book a Workshop or Start a Conversation

If your UX team is ready to articulate its value with clarity, confidence, and strategic depth, this workshop is a powerful place to start.

→ Book a call with Karyn (links to Calendly)

Optional Add-Ons

Enhance the impact and create greater alignment across your organization:

1. Leadership-Focused Session

+ $1,500 USD
A tailored 60–75 minute session for senior leaders to:

  • Understand the workshop’s outcomes

  • See the multi-layered value UX provides

  • Explore how systems-aware thinking strengthens decision-making and alignment

This session builds executive visibility and reinforces UX as a strategic partner.

2. Customized Insights Report

+ $750 USD
A deeper written report synthesizing:

  • Key insights from the workshop

  • A refined articulation of your UX value story

  • Recommended measures across transactional, functional, strategic, and ecosystemic layers

  • A roadmap of near-term and longer-horizon opportunities

This document becomes an internal asset leaders can share and build upon.