Seedcamp is a week-long event where young entrepreneurs come together with advisors and investors to put together viable start-up businesses. Flow will be there to provide user experience advice to the teams.

Venture capitalists know a thing or two about investments. Which is why user experience is one of the factors involved in seedcamp. For interactive projects, user-centred design reduces risk and increases returns.

User centred design techniques dramatically reduce the risks associated with innovating and launching new products. After all, if you've worked with your target users throughout the design process, you should feel pretty comfortable that you've made something your customers will buy.

As well as reducing risk, designing a good user experience boosts returns.The effort and money you put into research, concept and design will be paid back many times over through increased conversion and usage, a stronger brand and reduced customer acquisition costs.

Some of the literature quotes typical returns on investment at several hundred percent. It's entirely believable. In some situations, a simple usability test, or a piece of insight from the field, can prevent a key problem that would stop users from adopting an new interactive product.

Shrink to fit

Start-up ventures don't have much to invest. That's ok: the process doesn't have to be difficult or expensive. User-centred design techniques shrink to fit. You can perform basic user research with friends and family. Sketch prototypes are easy to create with just a pen and paper. You can perform rapid iterative usability tests in just a few days. When Flow worked with Moo Print during its start-up phase, the team powered through five design iterations in a week.

The point is though, that like any investment if you put nothing in, you'll get nothing back.

So here's our investment advice for all 22 teams at seedcamp. Focus on understanding your users' needs, motivations and real-world behaviours. Then use your insights to help you design and deliver the right user experience. Payback won't be far behind.