Overview
Introduction
What's the point of an attractive Web site or application if it's not clear or easy to use? Ease of use is often the critical differentiator between a successful site and a marginal one. That's why our usability experts put ease of use first, making sure your intended audiences' perspectives are always taken into account.
Our usability services include all forms of usability design, prototyping, evaluation and testing. Experienced usability experts work with you to assess the ease of use of your Web sites and applications based on common usability standards and best practices. We offer state-of-the-art usability labs that enable us to test real users in a controlled environment, collecting and comparing usability data. We also offer fully automated unattended remote usability testing and web-based surveys to allow you to validate your designs cost-effectively with large samples of users all over the world. A valid usability assessment will aid you in determining which improvements would be most effective, helping to optimize your Web or application investment.
Our Approach
IBM’s industry-leading User Centered Design (UCD) methodology encompasses the end-to-end process of designing and developing compelling experiences for the Web, kiosks, intranets, business applications, and pervasive devices.
Our approach is based on a simple premise: The purpose of any interactive application or solution is to engage and serve the needs of its users, whether they're your customers, potential customers, employees or other stakeholders.
Building on a solid foundation of knowledge – as complete an understanding as possible of who the key audiences are, what they want and need, and how best to meet those needs in an engaging, compelling way – is the key to success in today’s extremely competitive environment.
UCD is an iterative methodology that integrates the outputs of differentiated strategic, creative, and technical work streams to build compelling interactive customer experiences.
Taking all of these elements into account, UCD offers a structured way to explore your requirements and audience needs, and to tailor a solution that will meet or exceed those needs.
Depending on your specific situation and needs, our UCD effort can include some or all of these elements:
- Client requirements: Following a facilitated requirements-gathering session, we create a detailed analysis of business needs, along with identified audience wants and desires.
- User profiles and scenarios: Based on client requirements and audience definitions, we develop profiles of key user types. For each user type, we craft scenarios that describe how they would use your Web site to accomplish desired tasks. We bring these user profiles to life, by creating user personas, which help sensitize the design team to the unique needs of each of the user constituencies.
Navigational structure: We next outline and develop a detailed navigational structure that supports identified user tasks and goals. - Low-fidelity prototyping (Wireframing): Building on the navigational structure, we quickly and iteratively create templates of major screen types to show how features and functions that meet identified user needs will be integrated.
Visual design: We create several design concepts for the site, enabling you to envision and evaluate alternative approaches for applying your brand in the digital realm. - Style guide: We document “how to build it” specifications for implementing the user interface with agreed-upon design elements and branding.
High-level content strategy: With audience needs in mind, we provide a detailed look at content considerations, including recommendations on sourcing, editorial style, governance and management. - High-fidelity prototyping – Using our suite of rapid design tools, we put it all together in “high-fidelity” prototypes that create interactive mock-ups that closely represent what the final solution will look like. Our development framework allows us to put “hooks” into our design prototypes so that they can be iteratively refined and evaluated through usability testing.
- Usability evaluations – Usability evaluations occur at the low-fi, visual design, and high-fidelity prototyping stages, where we use multiple methods to efficiently investigate and validate, information architecture, navigational structure, visual design, and user interaction.
Final recommendations: We identify critical success factors and recommended next steps for implementing and launching your new business solution.
Our People
The IBM UCD Practice has been providing user-interface design and evaluation services to IBM clients since the early 1990s. The practice currently has 110 UCD consultants globally with formal training, skills, and experience in all facets of user experience design, including branding, information architecture, graphic and visual design, usability engineering, content strategy and taxonomy, user-interface prototyping, user-interface design, user research, usability testing, usability engineering, and user requirements gathering.
Our UCD practitioners are prolific inventors having created 475 user-interface patents in the last 12 years. In fact, it is very likely you use one or more of our UCD patents everyday, as they are cross-licensed in applications such as Windows XP, PowerPoint, and MS Outlook.
Many of IBM’s UCD consultants hold advanced degrees and are active members of various professional organizations. IBM UCD consultants publish frequently on the topics of UCD and UI design and implementation. ).
The UCD practice is structured like most small, specialized consulting boutiques; however, being part of IBM Business Consulting Services allows us to leverage the end-to-end reach of the world's largest consulting services organization.
