The foundation of a successful project is a clearly articulated strategy. We cannot make the right decisions about all the various aspects of the project, unless we know what we want to accomplish, both for our business and for our product’s users.

The process that we most often follow is:

Research & Planning

This, the first stage, aims  to understand the background of the product and the business behind it. The outcome of the Research & Planning process should then be a clear sense of what the product is about, what it offers the user, and what its users need.

The output of the Research & Planning process is a list of Requirement Specifications. This list defines the scope of the final product, and includes:

• Executive Summary
• Project Objectives and Expectations
• Target Audiences and Personas
• Competitive Analysis
• Functional Requirements
• Content and Search Requirements
• Language Selection and Localizations
• Technical Requirements
• Security Issues
• Third Party Products/Technologies
• Creative Brief (Visual Design Guidelines)
• User Experience Requirements

Functional & Visual Design

The functional design gives shape to the mass of requirements. It identifies and defines the specifics of the interface, navigation and information designs.

The output of this stage is a clear presentation of the whole project design, which acts as a way to communicate with the client, visual designers, content creators and developers.

The stages of preparing the functional design include:

• Defining the product taxonomy, including a taxonomy related to the content area.

• Drawing user-flows (showing step by step, how important tasks will be performed by different users).

• Drawing the wireframes, based on the taxonomy and user flows

Development

Once we have the requirement specifications and the functional design, we can proceed to development. This stage usually involves the software developers, the product manager and the visual designer.

It is very important to make sure that the application’s functionality and user interface are faithfully implemented, with the same content, meaning and quality which were defined for them in the original requirement specifications and functional design.

• The visual designer is responsible for the visual interpretation of the functional design. He needs to be allowed as much creativity as possible – while keeping all the functionality and creating a superb user experience.
• The software developers are provided with a detailed technical document which includes an in-depth explanation of the functional design from their point of view.

Evaluation

We perform usability and quality assurance evaluation throughout the product life cycle, to ensure that the product is easy to use and that users have a positive experience.  We use both heuristic evaluation methods and user testing sessions.

• Heuristic evaluation involves an expert review of the product, including a systematic inspection of the user interface design. Its goal is to find the usability problems in the design, so that they can be attended to as part of an iterative design process. Its advantage is that it is usually the quickest and easiest type of evaluation to perform, and can be carried out even during the development phases of the product.
• User testing sessions are necessary to find out how “real users” experience the product, and correct any problems. However they can only be carried out when the product is in final or near-final form, at the end of the development process.

Maintenance

Support and product maintenance are a major part of our services. We provide 24/7 technical support and are involved in the ongoing effort to improve the product and add features and functionality.