The ROI of UX and CX, and the business value of user-centred design

09/15/2026
By:

Paul Weaver
Hyatt Hotels
VP, Digital Design

Tags:

For all the talk of customer-centricity, proving that investment in CX and UX actually pays off remains one of the hardest parts of the job, as uncovered by CX Network's CX Horizons: The State of CX 2026 report, in which 52 percent of practitioners reported that pressure to prove ROI is increasing. Even as many organizations are pouring money into new tech, many still treat user experience as merely cosmetic rather than a key driver of conversion and retention – and therefore of revenue. This can leave practitioners defending every design decision to stakeholders who are only interested in the numbers. The result is that teams can end up scaling the wrong thing before its been validated, and experience can stagnate.

In this session, Paul Weaver, VP of Design at Hyatt Hotels Corporation will reframe UX and CX as a discipline for understanding customers and validating ideas before investing in delivery. He'll draw on cautionary tales and real-world case studies to show the true value of user-centred design, and what it looks like when its measured in commercial outcomes rather than aesthetics.

Attendees will learn:

How to quantify the cost of getting CX and UX wrong, and the value of validating early.
How to connect design maturity to meaurable business outcomes, using Hyatt's journey as the model.
How to translate user research into the operational and revenue metrics leaders will act on.