Persistent promises you that extra value add for your solutions when it puts its usability expertise to work for you. We provide complete solutions that deliver definite and tangible results.

The Persistent UE team keeps up its reputation of being a technology front-runner by offering comprehensive Usability Consulting and User Focused Analysis. Contextual Enquiry explores the intersection of technology and human cognition, focusing on a specific set of tasks executed by specific users in a particular context.

The Returns on Investment (ROI) that accrue from a user focused Analysis on intranet or internal software can increase productivity up to 160%, decrease drop-off rates in e-commerce up to 150% and reduce internal training costs up to 100%.

We have what it takes to be the ideal outsourcing partner for global organizations - Domain expertise, comprehensive infrastructure facilities, reliable methodology, project transparency and quality monitoring.

Our vertical focus areas include:

1. e-Commerce
2. Life Sciences
3. Telecommunications
4. Healthcare Integrated Services
5. e-Governance
6. Creative Communications
7. Identity Management Applications.

Benefits

1. Reduce costs by focusing on functionality, design
2. Demonstrable effect on ROI, deployment costs and user productivity
3. Provide a competitive advantage
4. Eliminate over design
5. Provide data for design decisions
6. Ensure a better reputation for products
7. Increase customer retention and satisfaction
8. Help uncover real needs and tasks of user.

A Usability Review is a systematic and critical inspection of an existing website or application conducted by a usability expert to elicit usability problems. It is based on usability heuristics and best practices in the industry as well as the Usability expert’s knowledge about different sets of user types and their behavior patterns.

Most commonly, the UE review attempts to find usability issues in the following categories:

1. Branding and Strategy
2. Navigation and Structure
3. Content
4. Presentation
5. Interaction.

In addition, the review can contain a task based / scenario-based review, and a competitive review. It is not based on actually meeting the users and having them perform critical tasks using the interface.

Engagement

A UE review is done on an existing interface so can be applied at any stage of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). A typical review takes about 2 to 3 weeks to complete. A Usability review can be done on:

1. Any prototype
2. A concept sketch
3. Existing product interface.

Deliverables

A typical deliverable will consist of PowerPoint slides that show examples from your site/application that have specific usability problems. Recommendations are provided on how to mitigate these problems. Wherever necessary, a redesign is shown in wireframe form.

Benefits

It essentially is the quickest way to identify usability problems in existing user interfaces. By prioritizing the problems it enables the development team to solve 60% of usability problems in a short span of time. The client benefits include a high return for a relatively short duration of effort and low cost.

Usability testing is a way to obtain direct feedback from current or potential users of the application or website. Tests can fall into 2 categories- formative and summative. Formative tests are those that are done while the product is being developed while summative tests attempt to find out whether the interface meets the human performance objectives.

A usability test attempts to obtain information about the users’ mental model of the task at hand.

Engagement

Formative tests are done early in the product development process whereas summative tests are done midway and at the end of the development process. A usability test depends on the number of users to be tested. It takes about 2 to 3 weeks to test and analyze data from 15 users. Usability test can be done on:

1. Paper prototypes
2. Concept sketches
3. Hi-fidelity working prototypes
4. Working product.

Deliverables

The deliverables for a usability test consist of the following:

1. Data gathering/ test protocol
2. Usability test report
3. Redesign recommendations in wire frame form.

Benefits

Usability testing brings out realistic problems users would face while using the product. A design that follows recommendations from a test is more suited to the users' mental model and hence easier to use. A Usability test is a good technique to showcase the importance of usability to clients and developer teams. They are often bewildered by users' reaction to their product (which is often negative). The cost of running a test is slightly higher than that of conducting an expert review, but it brings out some unique problems that an expert review normally wouldn't.

When constructing a house, we first build the pillars and beams before building the walls and rooms. Similarly, conceptual design means building the pillars and beams of your site/application. Experts say that 80% of usability is determined by the site / application conceptual design.

If branding is an important aspect of the site / application then a visual concept design should also be built.

Engagement

Formative tests are done early in the product development process whereas summative tests are done midway and at the end of the development process. A usability test depends on the number of users to be tested. It takes about 2 to 3 weeks to test and analyze data from 15 users. Usability test can be done on:

1. Websites/ Web applications
2. GUI applications
3. Interactive voice response systems
4. Handheld/ mobile applications
5. Physical interfaces.

Deliverables

Conceptual design is also called high level design. At the end of this exercise we provide:

1. High level site map/ information architecture
2. Wireframe designs for all high level design pages
3. High level design document
4. Conceptual visual design (optional).

Benefits

Putting efforts in building the conceptual design early in the process ensures efficient navigation and an overall structure that matches users' expectations. The likelihood of failure of the application and rework reduce drastically if conceptual design is done diligently. Conceptual design along with detailed design can define the complete scope of the application and forms a basis for the development team to define the application completion point.

Conducting user studies, on a mass population or sample population, requires substantial time and efforts, if one expects valuable results that improve the outcomes on principles and practices of human factors and user behavior.

Engagement

1. Select the right kind of user samples based on the project specifications.
2. Absolute sampling for conducting user studies.
3. Information gathered from the sample data will be analyzed.

Deliverables

We provide reports, with user behavior, perception and needs which were identified during the user study.



Benefits

Helps in identifying and constructing model patterns in user behaviors, including narrative scenarios and user personas.

1. Helps in identifying and constructing model patterns in user behaviors, including narrative scenarios and user personas.
2. Helps articulate the user needs.
3. High level design document
4. Helps information structuring to drive the design activity- developing an organized conceptual structure to frame the design and generate solutions.

For the user, completing his/her tasks is most important when using a product. Taking into consideration this aspect of the users' mindset, we look at critical tasks that the user of a product does and review them through a cognitive walkthrough. Based on the findings of the review, the task flow is optimized for interaction and screens are redesigned.

Engagement

A task flow redesign engagement is a quick way to fix interaction problems and achieve optimum interaction performance. It can be done on an existing interface at any stage of the SDLC, the earlier in the cycle the better.

Deliverables

At the end of this exercise we provide:

1. Review of existing task flow
2. Redesigned task flow
3. Wireframe designs for all screens within the task flow.

Benefits

Performing a task flow redesign is essential for any type of interface because it attempts to improve the interaction efficiency for the user. It also helps bring out issues that can address the problems at a business process level. Though a task flow redesign makes more sense for a transaction type application, it helps other types of applications in creating a flow that the users understand.

Detailed design starts once the site / application organization is complete and tested. It entails building all the workflows and sketching each screen in the site / application. The layout, content, color, graphics and interaction for each screen is designed and documented in this phase.

Engagement

Detailed design can start pretty late in the SDLC after the high level design has been frozen upon. Detailed design can be done in parallel with UI development activities. Depending on the size of the application it takes anywhere between 8 to 16 weeks to complete detailed screen designs.

Deliverables

Deliverables for detailed design consist of the following

1. Wireframe designs for all screens in site / application
2. Visual comps of primary and secondary pages
3. Detailed workspace design document
4. Visual design document.

Benefits

Detailed screen designs done by our usability team will provide a consistent layout, look and feel to the application that fit the user's task model. In addition, the organized content and intuitive labeling will enable users' to comprehend the application easily. If the development team refers these screens, their interface development time will be cut in half. Coupled with our prototyping services the interface development time can be reduced further.

Standards are a way to ensure consistency throughout your product. There are several types of standards that can be built. Some can be in the form of checklists or guides, things that are good to know. Others such as template-based standards are more practical from a software development point of view. Our standards cover reusable interface templates, layout and presentation rules, detailed description and operation of controls, internationalization and localization guides and checklists.

Engagement

Standards should ideally be built before development starts. We can also get engaged in a standalone standards project where we set standards for a family of products.

Deliverables

Checklists and guidelines are provided in a Word or presentation format. Template-based standards are provided within an html container for the development teams to easily refer to and maintain them at a central location.

Benefits

Effective standards are those that are easy to implement and help in the development efforts. Our template-based standards along with the design rules document help reduce the development efforts. Standards are a good way to ensure consistency across products and product groups and help in creating a seamless user experience. It is a good investment for the clients because the standards that we create are reusable and can be applied to future products with a little customization.

Graphic design is the art of making the interface appealing to the users. But we have developed a scientific approach to creating user experience through graphic design. Our designers follow a structured design methodology that works hand in hand with our User centered design methodology. This enables us to create a visual experience that is optimized for user performance. The prototypes that we build range from low fidelity paper prototypes, graphic comps and high fidelity working prototypes.

Engagement

We recommend clients to start thinking about graphic design fairly early in the process while the interface design is being conceptualized. This provides an opportunity to build graphic concepts and test them with users, along with initial interface designs.

Deliverables

We provide graphical concepts as Photoshop or image files along with all the graphical assets that are required for visual design of your site/ application. Low fidelity prototypes are built using paper, Visio (or .PPT), and working prototypes in html. We can also provide visual design specifications that serve as style guides or reference material in the future.

Benefits

Coupled with the usability knowledge, our designers create a more delightful user experience through graphical concepts without compromising on the usability of the interface. Testing the graphical concepts with users and stakeholders ensures that user expectations and corporate goals are met and built into the interface.

Partnering with the customers

It's not about 'Page Design'; It's about 'Product Design Management'.

1. Going beyond Design Work
2. Bringing Value of Design Management
   
   1. Processes
   2. Resource Management
   3. Cost Benefits
   4. Scalability
   5. Right talent.

Complete life-cycle User Centered Design

The complete process of designing and developing a product through in depth user focused analysis, user focused design, standards and implementation support along with usability testing is called life-cycle user centered design. A life-cycle project spans across the entire product development cycle from conceptual design to final product.

Engagement

For a life-cycle project, the engagement starts from the conceptual stage. While the development team is being assembled and technological requirements finalized, UE has the opportunity to talk to stakeholders and user groups and complete the first phase of User Focused Analysis. In a life-cycle project usability involvement varies, it is typically very high in the earlier stages of user analysis and design and tapers down in the standards and implementation phases.
Deliverables

Broadly, the deliverables for a life-cycle project would be:

1. User and stakeholder insights
2. High level site map/ information architecture
3. Wireframe designs for all pages
4. Standards document
5. Graphic designs.