User Centred Design
We use the ISO 13407 standard for User Centred Design (aka UCD) to make sure the engagement between you and your audience remains unbiased and effective.
Probably one of the biggest mistakes in web design (or any kind of design really) is not taking the end-users perspective enough. It's easy to have the right intentions, but business needs, managerial politics and time are often in loggerheads with what's going to work with consumers.
Thankfully, this is one of our strong points. We help clients (and even other agencies) take a user centred view from the very start, not by lecturing, but by using effective processes and tools that will keep your business goals aligned along the way.
Personas
Some agencies trying to jump on the UCD bandwagon tend to make up audience personas to mask their lack of insight, but we produce ours using the right balance of the following techniques - and because we live and breath this way, we do it quickly and cost effectively.
- Professional experience and insight (gained over 12 years)
- Our existing database of Personas and profiles
- User and Stakeholder Interviews
- Desktop and Field research
The end result will be a series of pen-portraits that give a human face to your audience, but keeps them anonymous enough not to cloud your judgement. Personas can be used for a whole number of projects, from web site design/development to online marketing - so the shelf-life and value you get from them are worth far more than the sum or their parts.
User Journeys
Whether you call it a user journey, use case or user story, we can help you craft the routes and paths your audiences can or need to follow. We think about linear navigation as well as organic lateral movement to ensure users never get lost or frustrated.
Depending on your project, we'll create user journeys as either written specifications or visual flow diagrams (or even both) so that you and your stakeholders can buy-in to this way of thinking and gain a useful deliverable that can be used again and again.