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User-Centred Design Process
ObjectiveDigital
May 2009

User-Centred Design Process

Strategy
Review Existing Research
• To understand our client’s business and the context of the
project, we gather and review any existing research and
documentation including:
o Web usage statistics
o Previous user research
o Any relevant project documentation
o Client surveys or feedback
o Any issues collated by the call centre or client liaison
staff

Strategy
Strategy Planning Workshop
• In the strategy planning workshop we work with your business and your technical teams
to map your strategic customer experience requirements.
• All project stakeholders gain an objective understanding of the project, future strategies
and develop a roadmap for the project ahead.
Strategy

Strategy
Project Management Plan
• Before we commence work on any project, we complete a
Project Management Plan to ensure the project runs
smoothly, on time and on budget.
• This document outlines the following:
o Project Scope
o Project Roles
o Strategy
Key Dates
o Project Schedule and Resources
o Exclusions and Assumptions
o Project Meeting Plan

Strategy
Expert Review
• An expert review is a quick and reliable way to identify
usability issues early on in the process.
• It can look at existing technology, new
technology, prototypes or requirements documentation.
• A set of tasks representative of your strategy is used to
walkthrough the technology as though we are one of your
customers or staff.
• Issues are documented according to the tasks evaluated or
heuristics to ensure we cover everything.
• The outcome is a report with the issues prioritised with
accompanying actionable recommendations is provided.

Strategy
Competitor Review
• We review the competitor landscape to identify
functionality and design components that can be leveraged
within the new site.
• This ensures our designers have a full understanding of
what potential customers may have experienced
previously.
• We customise the review criteria for the project and cover:
Strategy
o Customer interaction processes
o Usability issues and opportunities
o Useful functionality and its execution
• We also review overseas sites to ensure that our solution is
cutting edge and leverages the technology available to its
full capacity.

Strategy
Social Media Strategy
• Customer experience extends beyond a website!
• We help our clients:
o Find out where users and competitors are on social
networks
o Determine which social networks a client should
participate in
o Identify relevant topic areas and key messages for
conversations
o Plan a management strategy for conversations
o Work out what content should be created and where it
should be posted
o Post content (images, videos, PDFs, comments etc)
o Social bookmark and tag relevant content
o Monitor social media for references to our client’s
business or relevant keywords

Research
User Description
• Different techniques can be used to describe your users:
o Task analysis
Task analysis teaches you more about what users want
to do on your site by listing the user tasks.
o Personas
Personas are often used as a design tool and reference
point to make decisions during project. Fictional people
represent the different key user groups.
o Scenarios (goal and story based)
Scenarios elaborate on the tasks in the task analysis
with more context around the goal users may have on
your site.
o Workflow/customer journey
A workflow illustrates the individual steps a user goes
through on your site to reach their goal. To develop an
intuitive and logical user experience is built each
process and the links between these are documented.

Research
Business Requirements
• Requirements gathering begins in the strategy workshop
with key project stakeholders, and continues with interviews
and site visits with staff and business unit leaders.
• These in-depth stakeholder interviews solidify requirements
from different parts of the business, as well as uncover
insights into user requirements.
• Business requirements are the priorities, needs, and goals of
the business for the project.
• They may cover budget, branding and marketing
requirements, content, functionality and technology
considerations.

Research
User Requirements
• Gathering user requirements means finding out how users want to interact with the website,
and their opinions of the existing website.
• Generally we ask users about the tasks they are completing when they use the website, and
the context in which they are completing them.
• Requirements gathering can be done in one on one interviews, focus groups, or surveys.
• Visiting users in their place of work or home provides valuable insights into the context of use.
• Brainstorming ideas in workshops can sparks ideas. Usability testing an existing site at this
stage also provides valuable insights.

Research
Focus Group
• A focus group is used to gather requirements about the
attitudes, beliefs and desires.
• To gather feedback on users, products, general tasks,
strategies and environments.
• It can also be used to gather reactions to ideas or
prototypes.
• It is a focused group discussion led by a moderator who
follows a plan that has questions, prompts, tasks and
exercises for the group.
o Typically 5-12 people per focus group.
o A typical focus group lasts for 2 hours.

Research
Ethnographic research
• Ethnographic research allows for first hand observation of
behaviour in the real world rather than a test environment.
• Participant are observed and interviewed at the place
where the technology is used, i.e. home or work, to
determine their usability requirements.
• This provides insight into the issues surrounding the use of
the technology rather than actual metrics.

Research
Online research
• Research tools deployed online:
o Tangler
Online discussion forums and groups to discuss a
technology.
o Surveymonkey
To design, collect and analyse online surveys.
o Optimalsort
An online card sorting tool to help organise
information.
o Treejack
To help make decisions around the information
architecture.
o RelevantView
An online market research tool tracking behavior and
opinion used for remote usability testing.

Research
Social network research
• Social networks can be leveraged to target and engage with
customers:
o Twitter
o Facebook
o LinkedIn
o Tangler
o Google Answers
o Yahoo Answers
o Or groups relevant to a particular customer need,
business or industry

Design
Information Architecture
• Information architecture (IA) describes the organisation and labelling
of the content and functionality on the website.
• It is generally a hierarchical structure defined to three levels, but may
go deeper if the website has complex functionality.
• Creating an IA is a decision-making process based on:
o
o Card-sorting results
Business strategy
o
o Usability testing
Project objectives
o
o Technology considerations
User requirements
• The most important input into the IA is the card-sorting exercise,
conducted in user workshops on online so you can consult your users
no matter where they are.
o As a group, users sort the proposed content of the website into
logical groups, and label each group.
o The exercise is repeated with several groups, and the results
compared.

Design
Documenting your IA
• We generally present your information architecture (IA) to three levels.
• A fast and visual way to document the results is to use a mind map or similar software.
• A group of stakeholders should work through the proposed architecture together, referring
to the outcomes of the user research, and the stakeholder and marketing requirements.
• The final output is documented in Excel format, useful later when populating the site with
content.
Working format Final format

Design
Design Workshop
• The purpose of the design workshop is to explore possible approaches to the wireframe
design based on user feedback, technical feasibility (accessibility, CMS etc) and stakeholder
and marketing requirements.
• Covered in the workshop are typically: the outcomes of the previous phase, the
recommended information architecture, and explore ideas for the wireframes.
• This ensures innovation within what is actually technically feasible.

Design
Wireframe Design
• Wireframes are sketches of the basic design of
the website.
• Starting as a team sketching on butcher’s paper.
• For any interactive pages, clearly indicate how
the interactions will work.
• Further development of the wireframes is
required to clearly explain how the interactions
works for development.
• Typically, the following wireframes are created:
Home; Level 2 & 3, search, and the key
interaction pages.
• Complex interaction sites require detailed
documentation to explain the workflow and
functional requirements.

Design
Graphic Design
• Once the wireframes are completed and approved they
move on to the graphic design phase.
• This may be conducted either by the clients’ design
agency, or Objective Digital’s own graphic designers.
• Here are some examples of our graphic design work:

Build + Test
Handover workshop
• The handover workshop ensures the developers have a
clear understanding of the project from both the business
and users’ point of view.
• The workshop participants include key business, technical
and consulting contacts. It covers:
o Project objectives
o Key user types and tasks
Strategy
o Site features and functionality
o Content requirements
o Reasoning behind wireframe design decisions

Build + Test
Prototype
• A prototype is used to test user reactions to new concepts
and functionality on website.
• Three types of prototyping:
o Low-fidelity, paper prototyping
o Clickable images/pages with Axure
o High-fidelity – fully functioning website
Strategy
• Our website development partner, Rage Communications,
can build website prototypes based upon the functional
specifications, wireframes and graphic designs that we
provide.
• The website developers are based in Chennai, with the
project management function managed by our Sydney
office.

Build + Test
Eye-tracking Usability Testing
• Testing with users identifies any usability issues, and allows
you to watch people as they interact with the site.
• This provides an understanding of why any issues arise.
• A representative sample of each user type completes a
series of tasks on the website.
• The use of Eye Tracking allows the users to undertake the
test on their own, without distraction.
Strategy
• Immediately following the test the participant’s eye
movements video is replayed from the session and they are
asked to comment on their experience.

Build + Test
Implement and retest
• For the UCD process to have value, it is most cost effective to
Test
implement the recommendations prior to the website build.
• The recommendations are prioritised into different
categories making it easy to differentiate between
showstoppers and cosmetic issues.
• The ideal UCD project goes through a series of iterations
Build Design
where changes are made to the prototype and tested with
real users before going into the build phase.

Build + Test
Manage Website Development
• We work with our website development partner, Rage
Communications, to build websites based upon the
functional specifications, wireframes and graphic designs
that we provide them with.
• The website developers are based in Chennai, with the
project management function managed by our Sydney
office.
• We have completed a number of successful projects with
Strategy
Rage Communications, and they build websites to a very
high quality standard, at highly competitive rates.