Software | User Centered Design

Introduction

The goal of most application developers is to provide a usable product that adds value to the user and fulfils the organisations goals. These goals vary between application types but to achieve them they all share the same requirements that they must be easily navigable, intuitive and reflect the user needs.

The Usability Company User Centered Design service is designed to provide a user centred design approach to application development. Working as part of the development team we are the users champion and provide the challenges to the development process that only an independent third party can.

The Process

The Usability Specialist creates wireframes (page mock-ups of individual screens) of the interface after a careful consideration of the application's intended content, audience, scenarios of use and technical constraints. Each element in the wireframes is verified by employing specialised techniques such as card sorting to elicit user feedback on the developing User Centered Design. The wireframe is constantly revised based on this feedback and any necessary design modifications are made. Throughout this process the technical feasibility of the proposed solution is constantly monitored.

User Centered Design has 3 key deliverables:

1. Interaction Schema - wireframes providing a page-by-page storyboard and descriptions of screen elements and features. It details what each screen should contain, and how the user can interact with it. It illustrates screen layouts, navigation rules and information flow. It is essentially a blueprint for design.
    
2. Service map - a graphical overview of the proposed service structure in the form of a hierarchical diagram. It depicts all of the screens within the service and the relationships between them.
    
3. Style guides - used to guide designers/site builders in developing the entire service. The style guide will offer rules for the use of navigation, design elements, controls, labelling, and error messages.

If you are planning a new application or considering redeveloping your existing application and would like to understand more about how our User Centered Design service can help you achieve a usable and scalable product then please call or email us and a consultant will be happy to talk to you.

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User Centered Design and Usability Evaluations: The Usability Company's work with Victor Chandler

The Usability Company was employed by Victor Chandler for User Interface (UI) and User Centered Design (User Centered Design) services. The objective was to build these capabilities in order to make incremental improvements to the existing Victor Chandler site and to inform the development of the future Victor Chandler site.

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User Centered Design and Usability Evaluations: The Usability Company's work with Camelot

Camelot enlisted the help of The Usability Company for its User Centered Design needs for online gaming on The National Lottery website. The Case study illustrates how User Centered Design plays an integral role in developing the most appropriate processes and structure for websites to fit specific business and user needs. The User Centered Design work completed for Camelot required a review of subscription and registration processes, customers' personal account management features and the online gaming process in order to determine the best options for processes and structure. Usability Evaluations were also conducted at key stages in order to test the User Centered Design's recommendations with real users and to inform the User Centered Design and Camelot team in choosing the best fit solutions.

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User Centered Design and Usability Evaluations: The Usability Company's work with The Planning Portal

The Usability Company has conducted usability evaluations for The Planning Portal over the last two years and continues to work closely with the site's content and development team

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