Advanced UX

When average is no longer good enough.

Is your UX stuck on “average?”

Average UX practices create average results. Go beyond average to create higher performance designs.

How do advanced methods differ from average?

• Knowledge-based personas, not demographic-based (more…)

• Task-Persona composites instead of generic personas (you’ll just have to ask us about this one…)

• Viability Matrix that avoids opinions and guesses in defining the MVP (more…)

• Task-oriented designs rather than feature-oriented (more…)

• Leveraging psychology to incite specific user behaviors (one example… and another good read…)

• Knowledge strategies to help users succeed beyond their own levels of skill and knowledge (more…)

And there’s even more…

• Observational research that uncovers profitable unmet needs, not just existing problems (more…)

• Designs that solve real problems rather than solutions looking for a problem to solve (more…)

• Designing for all of the customer’s touch points rather than just the website interaction (more…)

We can apply Advanced UX methods to your project to give you remarkable results, too.

We do things differently and it shows.
Our designs look very different because we do things differently. Is different better? If history is any indication, then, yes! Our track record of repeated success validates our advanced methods.

What do advanced UX results look like?

• 10% conversion rates

• Competition crushing designs - take over your market

• Disruptive products - create a new industry
  

Not only are these results possible, but we’ve done it, repeatedly.

Once is luck, twice is coincidence, but several times? That’s skill, and skill is repeatable. See what we can do for you.

We Design More Than Websites

No matter what business you are in,
we create winning designs for:
Websites
eCommerce
Web Apps
Enterprise Software
Medical Devices

How to Design vs. Why to Design

Most UX Designers can tell you how they created their designs with words like persona, journey map, and usability testing. We can tell you why our designs succeed. We rely on good user research to identify unmet user needs and then apply design principles that increase emotional investment and bridge the knowledge gap. We leverage the psychological and cognitive aspects of user experience design to create compelling interfaces that guide user behaviors.

For instance, ask others firms specifically how they would increase user engagement, then read this to see how we use specific triggers to elicit desired user behaviors: Creating Emotional Investment to Drive Stellar User Engagement

Our Track Record

How do we create winning designs, again and again?

By doing things differently!

We follow the user-centered design process but we execute the steps slightly differently. If you want mediocre results, follow the same average steps everyone else performs.

Other UX designers list the companies they have worked for, but no one describes what they did or how successful it was. We are proud of our successes.

Most good websites are stuck at 2-3% conversion and lead generation rates. We have an extraordinary track record of 5% and 10% conversion rates:

• Proflowers
  They tried a traditional design first, and it failed miserably. We designed the site in 1998 and it has remained pretty much the same, with conversion rates in the 15-25% range, depending on the season. More…

• FedEx Online Print Services
  They saw no profits with their original Print Services web app. We redesigned their app in 2005 and it has achieved ridiculously high success ever since. So much so that they were able to close their Brick and Mortar print locations. More…

• Vanguard's Investor Snapshot
  Their website is the model that other investment websites follow. We presented our design in 2000, but one VP opted for another design firm’s mediocre design, which failed every KPI. Vanguard eventually launched our design, which has driven the investment management domain ever since.

• There's more...
  Ask about our other successes, too.

Want to hear the back stories on these successes?

There is quite a bit of interesting humor in many of these stories. Let’s set up a call and talk more about these.

Our Secret Sauce 

How do we create winning designs, again and again?

Problem Definition

While most design companies are just that, design companies, we begin with real user research BEFORE doing any design. We always begin with clearly defining the problem, first.

User Research

User observations and interviews are our best source of user insight. We conduct user observations followed by clarifying interviews to find unmet user needs, and we always find some.

Of course we conduct other forms or user research, as well, such as usability testing, contextual interviews, surveys, etc., but user observations are the key to creating superior designs.

Task Analysis and Optimization

The user research concludes with an analysis of the key users and their tasks. We develop optimized task flow diagrams to illustrate the potential improvements that better support the stated objectives. This is where product innovation really begins.

Opportunity Prioritization and Alignment

Our unique and proprietary priority matrix is key to your success. We conduct an intense, highly collaborative meeting to identify and prioritize the tasks, objectives, and feasibility of key design opportunities. This balances the needs of the user with your business objectives and technical feasibility.

Solution Design

Once we've clearly defined the problem, the solutions become almost obvious. This leads to user-experience and interaction solutions that double your conversions.

User Experience and Interaction Design

Our design blueprints illustrate the user-experience and interaction design approach, while the accompanying narrative describes the system behaviors. This avoids "interpretation" errors that typically occur with design requirements documents or reports.

Usability Tests and Design Audits

Find out what works best before you build it. We conduct formal and informal usability tests to validate design approaches and identify potential issues, early. The test results suggest design refinements that avoid wasting time and energy on the wrong design.

Light and Fast

We use a "Light and Fast" design approach to avoid analysis paralysis and create effective UX/UI designs in weeks rather than months. 

Even though we move fast, we still create market dominating designs that stand the test of time. Our clients dominate their markets, enjoy some of the best conversion rates on the Internet, and succeed with our designs for 5, 10, even 20 years.

You will be hard-pressed to find another design team with that kind of success. We credit that success to our evolved methods and you will too.

Exceptional Solutions for Clients, Large and Small

Let's create a winning design together!