User-Centered Design Review and Consultation

Goals     Description     Benefits     Pricing    Internet client list

User-Centered Design reviews are conducted on your existing product or on early prototypes. A review by an experienced Usability Analyst can find many design problems that will compromise the usability and user-experience of your product. The analyst also provides solutions to each problem.

Reviews can also be conducted on your competitor's products in order to identify their strengths and weaknesses.

UCD Consultation provides feedback and advice to designers and developers throughout product design and build. The analyst is an "on call" resource for your design and implementation team.

Goals – UCD Reviews & Consultation

• Identify or anticipate issues in design that are likely to annoy, frustrate, confuse or disappoint the product’s end-user.
  
• Estimate the impact of identified issues on the usability or user-experience of the product.
• Provide recommendations for addressing the identified issues or avoiding anticipated issues.
• Within methodological limitations, “certify” a product or product component for an acceptable level of usability.
• Identify competitor product's strengths that your product will need to meet, and weaknesses that your product can exploit.

Description – UCD Reviews & Consultation

UCD Review

In a UCD review, I work with your prototype, your existing product, or your competitors' products, as if I were target-market end-users working through complete or partial usage scenarios in the real world.

I apply my experience and well-known usability heuristics to anticipate whether and why end-users may become confused, annoyed, frustrated, or disappointed at each step in the scenario. The context of these design issues is documented, the issue diagnosed, and a recommendation made for addressing the issue. 

Most reviews I have done on early specs, storyboards or wireframes take only a few hours, with my detailed feedback delivered for consideration the next day. Depending on scope or product complexity reviews of existing sites or products can take just a few days or two or three weeks.

Depending on the project, I may operate at arm’s-length to the original design process to allow me to adopt a fresh, uncompromised, unbiased, perspective in the design’s evaluation -- that of end-user.

A user-centered design review can be used effectively at any stage of a product’s design or development cycle. It is useful in the early design stage, where I can fill in the gaps of unspecified design details and provide cautionary notes about their implementation. Reviews should happen frequently during design to prevent the propagation of serious flaws throughout the product during build.

Design consultation

I act as a consultant to your design team to provide a “usability perspective” on any number of issues that arise during design or redesign. I can even go a step further and prototype design solutions for specific components of your product.

Benefits – UCD Reviews & Consultation

• Very quick turn-around, large effort/payback ratio in identifying or preventing design issues.
• Especially valuable when early low-fidelity design artifacts cannot yet be “felt” by end-users for effective hands-on feedback in usability lab testing.
  

Pricing – UCD Reviews & Consultation

UCD Review

• Cost of a design review depends on the scope of the product, the number and complexity of scenarios to be covered, and the strategic intent of the review (e.g., optimize interactive design vs. identify major issues vs. certify for usability).
• Existing product: A review of an existing product or complete interactive prototype, can take from a couple of days up to 3 weeks. The cost can range from CAD$500 to $20,000 (about US$350 to $15,000).
• Ongoing design project: Design reviews should occur quite frequently, with continual real-time feedback to design team. This work is billed on a time & materials or retainer basis.

Design consultation

• Consulting is billed on a time & materials or retainer basis.

Internet client list  1998-2003 – UCD Reviews

Bank of Montreal Frank Russell            Paine Webber           Bank One (A)           Bank One (B) CIBC           PrinterOn                 Word of Mouth Planet TRowe Price (A)       TRowe Price (B)        bowneinternet.com   Immersant.com CRM Marshall&Ilsley Bank settlement.org  Octanewave Software Nevada Learning businessworldnews.com

- Vendor solution evaluations - Prototype - Existing site - Existing site - Prototype - Prototype (paper form) - Build - Prototype - Prototype - Prototype - QA level site - Prototype & build - Prototypes & build - Existing site - Prototype wireless solution - Prototype - Existing site

I've also conducted usability reviews of several other products in my 8 years as a staff member at the IBM Toronto Development Lab.

Last update: May 2, 2003
(c) 2003 Don Hameluck Usability Consulting Inc.

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