GOLCHER Gabriel, DBA

Gabriel Golcher is a UX designer and leader with over 18 years of experience driving UX strategy and execution for global brands like Amazon and PayPal, as well as high-growth startups. A dedicated lifelong learner, he holds a triple-major Bachelor’s and three Master’s degrees from top institutions including Carnegie Mellon and IE Business School.

Gabriel Golcher will defend his Executive Doctorate in Business Administration (EDBA) in March 2026, with a thesis titled “Generating, Measuring, and Conveying the Return on Investment of User Experience: Bridging Practice and Research,” under the supervision of Prof. Christophe Elie-Dit-Cosaque, University of the Antilles – Martinique, France.

Prof Elie-Dit-Cosaque Christophe

Generating, Measuring, and Conveying the Return on Investment of User Experience: Bridging Practice and Research.

The field of User Experience (UX) plays a key role in the competitiveness and profitability of businesses, especially in the software industry. As a result, UX functions have become commonplace in modern businesses, with the number of practitioners and volume of research growing exponentially. Yet, the number of UX executives remains disproportionately low, especially when compared to other related functions like Product Management or Marketing.
A key reason for this phenomenon is that UX is perceived by business leaders as a tactical function, reducing the opportunities for UX practitioners to rise to the highest leadership levels in organizations. A significant contributor to this tactical perception is that UX practitioners lack the business acumen and tools to properly demonstrate the return on investment (ROI) of UX work. Following the Marketing playbook, I posited that UX executive representation could be increased if UX practice were to become geared towards inherently demonstrating ROI. I further identified that UX ROI research has stagnated in the last 18 years, yet the UX research community still possesses the skills to address this situation.
My study, then, aimed to bridge the gap between the experiences of UX practitioners generating, measuring, and conveying UX ROI to business leaders, and the academic and professional research undertaken in UX ROI. To accomplish this, I split my study into two parts. For the first part, I engaged in 24 practitioner interviews to identify the UX ROI attitudes, strategies, and practices of UX practitioners. For the second part, I evaluated 147 academic and professional UX ROI publications in a systematic literature review (SLR) that mapped out the research landscape. I then analyzed the results of both methods together, generating novel theories and recommendations for research and practice in this area.
With the practitioner interviews, I identified key themes that mapped to six interrelated concepts that together made up the Model of UX ROI. This model transcended measurement of UX ROI and incorporated the importance of stakeholder perceptions, the power and influence of the UX function, and the critical role of evangelization.
With the SLR, I found that while the volume of UX ROI research is increasing, the rigor of research is decreasing. The composition of UX ROI research evolved from a preponderance of peer-reviewed academic sources, to a preponderance of industry or student sources. Additionally, I identified several trends in the research over time, including: a move towards quantification of UX programs rather than projects, primacy of metrics over cost-benefit analysis, growing opposition to financial quantification of UX efforts, a diminishing of rigorous case studies, and greater awareness on the role of evangelization and power and influence.
Analyzing the combined results of both parts of the study, I found that there is a notable disconnect between UX ROI research and the lived experiences of UX practitioners in this area. While my main findings from the practitioner interviews are called out in previous research, they are secondary focuses and thus the disconnect happens not from a lack of awareness, but from a misunderstanding of what UX ROI actually is. I argue that existing UX ROI research primarily exhibits a mechanics worldview when it should be exhibiting a dynamics worldview that captures the inherent social processes. Building on top of this insight, I called out contradictions in UX ROI practice and research, ultimately identifying the Fundamental Contradiction of UX ROI: that although the value of UX to businesses has grown, UX practice and research has become more disempowered and commoditized.
Ultimately, while my work supported the idea that lack of business acumen and tools significantly contributed to the disproportionately-low executive representation of UX practice in businesses, in the process I uncovered a much larger opportunity: that UX ROI research could be instrumental in improving the experiences of UX practitioners and academics.