Process

Preparation of design concepts & paper mock-ups

 

• We develop conceptual designs & rough paper mock-ups to reflect various service concepts & interaction designs
  
  
• Brainstorming sessions can also be held with internal stakeholders & staff to ensure their knowledge, needs and feedback are gathered early & factored into the design.  This helps keep stakeholders informed & mitigate the risk or implementation or business problems being identified late in the project
  
  
• Screens are developed as rough paper mock-ups because they are faster to prepare (Requiring no development or coding)
  
  
• Users also respond more openly to rough paper mock-ups and are happier to indicate when they are not happy with a design.  When users are presented with screens that have had a visual design applied, users often feel the design is already finished and either do not want to criticize the designs or focus on the visual design.
  

Collaborative design sessions with users

• We get users to complete tasks using the mock-ups to evaluate the concepts & identify any major usability problems
  
  
• Various alternative designs can be tested to determine the relative benefits & weaknesses of each option
  
  
• The feedback about the alternatives can be reviewed with business & development stakeholders to decide which option they want to pursue.
  

Review & iteration

• After a few users sessions are completed, the main outcomes can be distilled & reviewed with stakeholders
  
  
• Any agreed changes can be implemented into the mock-ups and tested in subsequent rounds of collaborative design with users.
  

Outputs & outcomes

• Collaborative design delivers superior quality of design work through rapid iteration & refinement to help achieve the organisation’s business objectives.
  
  
• The output is a set of screens or service concepts that have had any major usability problems identified & fixed prior to launch.
  
  
• A report can be prepared documenting the main outcomes of collaborative design before proceeding onto usability evaluations.
  
  
• After several rounds of collaborative design & iteration, the paper mock-ups can be put through usability evaluations (sometimes called usability walkthroughs when screens are evaluated in paper form). 
  
  
• Alternatively, the design can be developed into an electronic prototype or working system & evaluated with users (testing working prototypes & live systems with users is called usability testing). See usability evaluations for more detail.