Services - Usability Services

Usability by Design was founded on the user experience, and usability remains one of our strongest areas of focus. The following are just some of the usability services we provide:

During initial stages:

Business Analysis / Requirements - it is imperative that the objectives and requirements for a project are captured and correctly set at the start of a project for it to have enough focus to succeed.
Card Sorting - when you have complex site content and want to structure it so that your users can easily find it, card sorting can help.
Task Analysis - find out what your users want from your product, how they expect it to work, and how they expect to interact with it - before the product is even built.
User Profiling - identify your customers, who they are, what their concerns, fears and goals are. This helps immensely when starting out on design.

During design:

Prototyping - at the earliest stages of design we can help to produce prototypes of the design ready for testing, before even a single line of code is written. Ironing out the usability issues before development starts is an incredibly cost effective way of designing.
Usability Testing - there is no substitute for seeing your customers actually using your design, and finding out where the design needs to be improved. We also offer a free sample usability test of your own site, so you can see just how useful testing can be.
Usability Evaluations - fast and cost-effective, usability evaluations provide instant feedback on the health of a product and how the usability of it can be improved.
User-Centred Design / Interaction Design - a user-centred approach to designing is key if a usable produce is desired at the end of the process. We can help with anything from a full user-centred design process down to 'plug-in' interaction design resource, from a few hours to a few months.

After launch:

Metrics/Analytics - if you can't measure it, you can't improve it. Usability needs to be measured and improved, and it needs to deliver measurable benefits to the organization. We can help you continue to monitor usability day to day.
Training - transfer of knowledge to your teams is a key element of our approach, to allow your teams to become more self-sufficient. Whether you want general usability training or specific advice on how to run usability research in-house, we have a number of training packages available and can tailor them to your needs.

See also:

About usability

Do you have trouble programming your VCR? Ever used a web site and given up in frustration before you attained your goal? Then you know how frustrating and damaging bad usability can be.

Good usability is about understanding who the user (read 'customer') is, what their needs are, and how they think about achieving their goals. Then it's about placing that knowledge at the center of the design process, so that the end product matches the real requirements of the users. Get that right, and people find the product (or web site) easy to use. More people purchase, as they find it simpler and more pleasant to shop. For example on one site we worked on, usability improvements saw the amount customers purchased on average increase by 36%.

Get it wrong and people struggle to use the product, and sales go down. Another site we worked on was losing over 90% of its visitors before they even made it past registration, thanks to very poor usability.

It's very similar to a real-world experience. Imagine you walk into a shop looking to buy some items and find everything exactly where you expected it to be with clear labelling, supporting information, comparisons and everything you need to make the choice to buy. The checkouts are nearby, clearly marked and friendly staff walk you through your purchase. Would you go back? Would you maybe buy more of your items in that shop next time?

Now imagine that another shop provides the opposite experience. It takes ages searching up and down the aisles to find anything, half the items don't have clear labelling, there's no comparisons. You struggle to find the checkout and when you do you hit a number of problems paying. In fact the assistant has to cancel the sale twice and restart.

Which shop would you use in future?

Usability as we practice it is a set of tools that work alongside your own processes, to ensure a usable product is delivered - or to increase the usability of an existing product. Our processes are deadline-driven, so that they don't need to impact on your timescales or project milestones. They are completely flexible, so that they fit your environment, platform and stage in the project lifecycle without requiring you to change. And finally, they are well-proven and based on years of research and analysis, so that they are guaranteed to offer value for money and the highest return on investment possible.

If you'd like us to help your company, then click here to contact us.