User experience

UIS Development Services' User Centered Design (UCD) can provide you with user engagement and user experience research, report creation, and advice on all aspects of user centered design.

Usability Testing

Usability testing uncovers problems that real users experience with your application or website under the actual conditions of use.

Using industry-led tools, we run remote and moderated usability testing at all stages of development. We test real people while they perform real tasks and note where they experience problems. We can advise on changes to content, content structuring, information architecture, search engine optimisation, meta data management and any issues with the website that affect the impact or usefulness of the content.

You will receive:

• A test plan to help you understand the testing process and provide input to ensure that you get the information that you need

• A highlights video of key usability issues

• A detailed usability report describing the problems and observations discovered during the usability testing

• Actionable recommendations for fixing usability problems

As performance and attitude measures are independent, we also provide self-reported participant ratings for satisfaction, ease of use and ease of finding information.

User-centred design (UCD)

The UCD process typically involves four stages:

• Research:Learning about your users or potential users of your product and the context under which they will use it. We utilise a number of techniques such as auditing, interviews, diary studies, concept testing, competitor and gap analysis, usability testing and analytics.

• Design:  Examining the needs of your users and identifying and developing new concepts to address those needs such as information architecture, templates,  bespoke build components and communicating the solutions to deliver those concepts. We design and usability test your product through a series of iterated cycles to feed into and refine the next.

• Build: Developing solutions to ensure there is a excellent match between the requirements and the final product.

• Launch: Delivering a streamlined software or website solution that fits exactly with user needs. Once the product is launched, we gather feedback and metrics including web analytics, further usability testing, and user research.

Next step

To request either of these services please use the form at http://www.uis-cms-services.admin.cam.ac.uk/usability-assessment to give first details so the project can be scoped and a costing model supplied to you.