Research & Discovery
Research and discovery are fundamental to fully understanding your business goals and your users' needs and frustrations. We gather information from stakeholders to ideate solutions for problems. We also gather real user data to expose issues and hypothesize ways in which we can improve the overall user experience.
On-site Workshops
We try and make our on-site workshops as interactive as possible. Our client stakeholders are experts in their own organisations, therefore, anything we can do to extract valuable information from them is to everyone’s advantage. In order to do this effectively the workshops must be fun and engaging.
User Personas
Personas are fictional characters which are created based on existing knowledge and research in order to represent the different user types that might use your service, product, site, or brand. Creating personas will help both stakeholders and designers to understand your users' needs, experiences, behaviours and goals.
User Experience Mapping
We hold experience mapping sessions with the client stakeholders during the onsite workshops. During the sessions, we brainstorm how the typical user would think and feel during the main stages of the buying/conversion process. This leads to discovering new opportunities and helps to identify where there are knowledge gaps in the process.
Card Sorting
Used to help design or evaluate the information architecture (IA) of a site. In a typical session, participants organise topics into categories that make sense to them; they may also help to label these groups. A highly collaborative exercise with insights gathered helps to ensure subjective opinion is identified and rejected quickly in favour of data-driven results.
Information Architecture
Through an iterative process, an IA document is produced containing all the main pages of your website. Grouped by category, it forms the navigational structure highlighting intended bespoke templates used on each page. When this document is signed off, wireframing and design concepts can commence.
Content Structure
Once we have a good idea of what pages we need and what groups they fall into, we can then dive into the content that will appear on each page. It is important to understand which assets and features are needed and ensure all of the business requirements and user goals are met. During this stage, it is also important to consult the current UX findings such as the User Personas and the Experience Maps to sanity check decisions.
Focus Groups & User Interviews
We use focus groups as a research method to gather feedback and opinions from customers. Each person in the group is encouraged to participate in a pre-planned discussion and guided by a facilitator. This can be completed onsite or by an online service such as usertesting.com. We record all of the sessions, typically alternating between mobile and desktop browsing to identify changes in responsive behaviour.
Wireframing
In order to communicate user journeys and showcase early design ideas, we sketch first and then produce low fidelity wireframes. Rather than introducing aesthetics, it is the content that has priority at this stage. We find this is the quickest way to propose ideas and experiment with the placement of features. It also illustrates content and user flow as part of early interactive testing.
Concepts & Prototyping
Using our key page wireframes the next stage is to create high-resolution design concepts and prototypes. These help visualise the look and feel of the site. Brand guidelines establish colour, type and imagery. Usability and visual accessibility requirements also influence our decision making at this stage. We then create and share working prototypes with our stakeholders in order to garner valuable feedback.
Development & Integration
