Usability Testing Audits User-Centred Design Requirements Definition Process Consultancy TrainingEyetracking Services International Usability

Design should not be guided by technology or organisational politics; it should serve users' requirements, which may be explicit or tacit. It should also be iterative, always being directed by increasingly focused design research. ISO 13407 is a framework for 'human-centred design' that takes all of this into consideration.

Amberlight consultants work in partnership with your team. We will decide with you from the start as to the nature of this interaction. We can produce design prototypes in their entirety, or simply work on your in-house designs.

UCD does not stifle creativity. For products to be usable or persuasive, they must also be attractive. Our UCD approach incorporates your in-house artists and designers, allowing them to focus on what they want to do, while we remove the burden of implementation decisions.

Process

The approach is highly iterative. Increasingly finalised solutions are based on rounds of increasingly focused design research.

The activities we undertake are very specific to your circumstances. However, the general approach is:

1. Define stakeholder requirements, and understand business goals, target audience and any technical or commercial constraints.
2. Conduct primary research to fully define product concepts and user requirements, and to document benchmarks for success.
3. Produce and iterate conceptual designs and information architecture that meet the requirements dictated by the design research.
4. Produce and iterate wireframed screen-by-screen prototypes that meet the requirements dictated by the design research.
5. Support in-house or external artists, developers and production teams to deliver final systems for launch or release.

Deliverables

Amberlight do not build or code your product. While the ultimate output of a UCD project is a product to launch, this will require considerable work from your in-house or external developers, or from our network of partners.

The benefit of our involvement is that we produce prototypes very quickly, which can be used for iteration, and these prototypes are explicitly based on design research and the requirements of real users. These prototypes will be the foundations of your final product. You will only pursue design solutions that have been proven to be useful, accessible, usable and persuasive.

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