Know Thy User®
We don’t put pen to paper or finger to keyboard until we truly understand our users.
OUR PROCESS
Developed for project success
We have developed an award-winning project delivery methodology that puts people at the heart of it. We call this Know Thy User® and we have used it to deliver millions of pounds of value.
This methodology covers every part of the project, from user research, design and content to build, test and launch.
Project management and delivery sits at the foundation of everything we do. We have built an exceptional team who are responsible for the successful delivery of every project.
Your project delivery will be broken down into 8 key stages:
PHASE 1
DISCOVERY AND PLANNING
At this early stage in the process, we find it’s most effective for project teams from both the client and the agency to begin discussions on the responsibilities, requirements and deliverables from both parties. As well as key project milestones, to ensure we’re all moving in the right direction for a smoothly run, successful project. With human hosting the workshop, we’ll be able to gather and create documentation, in a collaborative workshop style, that’s needed as the foundation to the project like understanding the customer journey and any potential design limitations.
PHASE 2
USER RESEARCH
We don’t believe that traditional demographics and user personas are the best way to understand your users. To reach a fundamental understanding of your users, you have to understand their motivation and this can go beyond age, gender or socio-economic background.
We want to understand individual user stories, what motivates them, what they are trying to achieve and how we can help them do it.
THE MMEDL® SYSTEM
Motivation
Understanding the ‘why’ is the most important stage of user research, next we work to understand ‘what’ they want to achieve and finally ‘how’ we can help them do this.
Mood
We look at the user’s emotion - how are they feeling? Are they anxious, stressed, angry, concerned? A user's mood could be very different if they are booking a holiday or paying their taxes. This needs to be reflected in the user experience.
Device
We also look at the device and OS the user may be using, are they using their voice? Smartphones constantly distract us with notifications so a website’s user experience needs to get their message across quickly and succinctly.
Location and Environment
Finally, we look at the location the users could be in and take into account the distractions all around them - are they on the sofa with their family? Are they walking their dog? Are they on the bus? How will all these factors contribute to their user experience?
All of these factors will have a definitive effect on the tone of voice, and navigation for the user. This thinking and research enables us to understand the specific user stories so that we can design a delightful and effective digital experience.
PHASE 3
INTERACTIVE WIREFRAMES
Based on our research and expertise in UX best practice methodologies, we create interactive wireframes for each page.
All wireframe feedback is correlated to create a final layout. This is signed-off by the client before we embark on the design concepts.
PHASE 4
USER TESTING
Once we have created the interactive wireframes for the new website, it’s vital that we take them to real users and gather feedback. Firstly on the look and feel of the design, but also usability of the wireframes and their emotional reaction to the concept.
We use a blend of qualitative and quantitative questioning to gather feedback and typically would use a remote, unmoderated usability test. This would allow us to use a higher number of participants and facilitate the direct completion of set tasks. With this test, we use quantitative data to assess the efficacy of the new design and architecture.
The tools we use to complete this part of the testing process include:
An example of this is a project we delivered for LV=. They wanted to test whether their customers would purchase life insurance via a mobile device.
PHASE 5
DESIGN
Using the agreed wireframes, and with the consolidated user testing feedback, we will then start the design process.
Our design team generates unexpected ideas to break through, transform and make an impact through timeless Challenger & Iconic design.
Best practice does not start with a list of features, but with the users' needs. The organisations that place their focus on their users and treat them as a driving force for all major design decisions are those that create the most success.
A well-organised and designed website consists of:
Great UX that considers the satisfaction, usability, accessibility, and overall user experience
Brand-strengthening design
Simple navigation
Strong site architecture
Lots of room for your content
SEO-friendly elements
Responsive design
Beautiful imagery
We have created a unique and effective design framework we named PIRI®. The framework was designed to ensure that every page on your website has a purpose. Whenever a piece of content is considered, it should achieve at least one of these: Promote, Inform, Reassure, Inspire.
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Content can promote a specific product, ethical campaign, scientific study or benefits of becoming a distributor. Promotional content helps sell to a customer.
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Informative content is valuable to any company. This is mainly factual and is used to provide information or explain something to the customer. An example of this could be “how do I buy a product?”
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Some customers may not be intimately familiar with your company or the services and products that you offer. Content can be used to reassure a customer and encourage trust and the best way to do this is through existing customers. This can be done through social validation, for example customer reviews of products or services.
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Content that inspires can encourage users to take action, whether that’s purchasing a product or joining as a distributor.
One of the best ways to achieve this is through storytelling. People love to see, read or hear stories because it creates a human connection based on empathy.
We use data driven design to help us quantify the impact our design changes have on user attention. To do this we use a platform called Eyequant which combines advanced neuroscientific research, artificial intelligence and neural network modelling to simulate how users will react to our designs. EyeQuant helps to validate design changes and helps us to quickly identify what parts of your designs are attracting attention.
PHASE 6
TECHNICAL BUILD
During the development stage, we adopt a more agile approach to our build, to ensure a quick release for the website, higher-value to you, and a quicker ROI.
By breaking the build into iterations or sprints, we offer the opportunity to review points from our clients if required. Review points would be used to make sure we are on track, with any additional requirements being parked, and considered at a later stage in the build, or we can halt development and flesh out the new requirements, adapting our approach to the build.
We combine the very best technical platforms, including Microsoft SQL Server, .NET Core and single page apps, accelerated with our Rapid Application Development methodology to deliver software quickly. We will demonstrate your platform as we go until it is released and in operation, using our established Agile Software Development Methodology.
At the front-end, we will use browser-based technology, HTML5 served by .NET Core and C# programming. We combine the very best technical platforms, including Microsoft Azure, SQL Server and Web APIs. We also have expertise in JavaScript frameworks like VueJS, React & Angular – the scripts that create interactivity on the web.
Uniquely, our in-house development team are search engine specialists too. So you can be assured that from analytics setups through to page structure and technical makeup that all decisions will take into consideration optimisation for search.
Our trained search specialists keep up-to-date with the latest algorithm updates, attend events and webinars on best practices and we believe in passing this knowledge onto your team so you aren’t completely reliant on us once the project has launched.
PHASE 7
USER ACCEPTANCE TESTING (UAT)
User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is one of the last stages of the software development life cycle. It is performed after the software has been thoroughly tested by us for approval for production release.
Within the user-acceptance testing stage, you have the opportunity to review the website to ensure it meets with your requirements and to do a final pass over to ensure all elements are working sufficiently.
You would work closely with our quality assurance and producer teams at this stage who will be triaging any issues you might raise and will work closely with the project delivery team at this stage to rectify any issues which might have been identified.
PHASE 8
LAUNCH
Following user-acceptance testing sign-off, we will push the code into the production environment using a best practice deployment automation process.
Deployment automation allows applications to be deployed across the various environments used in the development process, as well as the final production environments. This results in more efficient, reliable, and predictable deployments. Solutions that automate the deployment processes improve the productivity of both the dev and ops teams and enable them and the business to develop faster, accomplish more, and ultimately build better software that is deployed more frequently and functions more reliably for the end-user.
We will liaise closely with any third parties, and with you as our client throughout the live deployment, to ensure that any integration points are carefully managed. We will also collaboratively test the site to ensure that such integration points are working as expected.
Our quality assurance team will run regression scripts and tests immediately following the live deployment, and our development team will provide hyper-care on the day of go-live, and the day immediately following, to ensure that any issues identified on the live site are rectified as soon as practicable.
Once the site is stable on the live servers, then we will begin to support the site through warranty stages, and ongoing support.