At the heart of every user experience Expero creates
is our process, which incorporates user input and feedback
throughout the project life cycle. Expero developed
and perfected this process over time, drawing on the
collective experience of our management team and employees.
As part of many software development teams, we have
built and launched hundreds of products and websites.
Our approach uses a blend of techniques from disciplines
such as product management, marketing, usability, design,
communication, development, and quality assurance.
The various techniques are employed at specific points
in the life cycle of a website or product. The goal
is to deliver a user experience that will resonate
with the intended audience and achieve the business
goals of our client. When employed in full, our process
has a proven track record of dramatically improving
business drivers such as lead generation, customer
spending, overall brand perception and lower support
costs.
Although the exact process employed is tailored for
each engagement, below is an example of the process
for a typical engagement.
Definition & Validation
Like sponges, our experts immerse themselves in your
world. We soak in your market, your customers, your
end-users and the problems you’re trying to
solve. We observe and interview users to learn how
they work, think and approach the tasks they need
to perform. We work with business stakeholders to
define requirements and set metrics that will guide
the design and measure the success of the project.
These metrics might include target lead conversion
rates, completion times for specific user tasks,
and scores for user satisfaction surveys.
Next, we lower your risk of building the wrong thing
by validating the requirements with end-users. Our
definition and validation methods help ensure that
your product and website requirements are defined and
prioritized properly before investing in design and
implementation.
Design, Content & Usability Testing
Next, we translate user data and requirements into
designs. To save time and money, we employ low-fidelity
techniques for design and prototyping. We often start
with paper-based storyboards or wireframes to illustrate
the workflow and navigation. We iterate, test the
usability of the concepts with representative end-users, and iterate
again.
Next, we design higher-fidelity prototypes and visual
treatments to demonstrate the navigation, interaction,
and look-and-feel. Often we create content and text
for the user interfaces we design, including user instructions,
Help, and error messages. All of this is tested with
users against our defined metrics.
This process allows us to create a useful, usable
and appealing design before a line of code is ever
written.
Implementation & Follow-Through
Our developers implement the user interface and create
the hooks needed to integrate with the back end of
your software. (Sometimes our client’s Development
team does this, and sometimes our experts augment that
team.)
We believe that implementation should not be “handed–off” to
Development. Designers and usability experts should
remain engaged throughout the implementation phase
to help developers make technical trade-off decisions.
Without direction, designs that are “handed–off” are
often subject to interpretation. We craft user experiences
with implementation in mind and want to ensure that
the user-validated designs are implemented as intended.
Before code freeze, we conduct a usability test with
users on a pre-release version to catch last-minute
usability issues and make changes accordingly.
Post-Launch Evaluation
After the launch, we assess the success of the product
or website against the metrics and business objectives
defined at the beginning. We do this through a variety
of techniques, including business data analysis,
stakeholder and user interviews, surveys, and user
testing.
By yielding feature requests from users and new objectives
from business stakeholders, post-launch activities
set the stage for the next release.
