Manage your design programme
Putting the user’s needs at the centre of the design programme ensures a relevant and successful outcome. As keepers of this important understanding, Stamford can manage a programme that maintains the balance between development realities and user needs. By fostering synergies and facilitating compromise between all design stakeholders, we ensure the most effective outcome from your development budget.
We recommend the following activities
Research
At Stamford Interactive, we employ user-centred design techniques to gain detailed understandings of your users' needs and business objectives. Working with your business and the target users, we specialise in deriving focused requirements, which lead to relevant and effective outcomes.
Domain analysis
Domain Analysis is used to understand the full context and environment in which your product operates. When undertaking a domain analysis we use a selection of approaches aimed at understanding your business, the environment in which your business operates and how your users interact with your business and/or product.
Tasks may include:
- Expert Interviews (internal and/or external)
- Contextual Inquiry
- Field Observation
- Competitive Analysis
- Process Analysis
- Technology Analysis
- Business Domain Modelling
Selection of tasks can be tailored to suit your scope, time and budget.
Design
At Stamford Interactive we are experts in designing and refining products to ensure that the user experience is enjoyable, intuitive and efficient. We apply our analysis and research findings to improve the design of products that demand a steep learning curve and rely on learned behaviour for users to complete the required tasks.
Our goal is to create designs that represent the union between your business goals and your user needs, increasing productivity and user satisfaction, therefore amplifying the real value of your product.
Conceptual design
Stamford's capacity for conceptual design sets us apart from the usability crowd. This often-neglected phase is the powerhouse where clear requirements are converted into a focused model, forming the DNA of the design solution.
Tasks may include:
- Requirements Analysis - Analysing the formal results of our process to identify patterns, relationships and directions
- Affinity Diagramming - Organising ideas to form and explore conceptual relationships
- Design Brainstorming - harnessing creativity to translate directions into design models.
Content design
Where Information Architecture focuses on grouping information, Content Design focuses on the information itself. A content plan maps the content required for the product. We can also write or translate content for web presentation while providing "writing for the web" training to ensure ongoingly web-relevant content.
Strategy
With a client list spanning some of the world's leading product brands and over 100 years collective experience in connecting business goals with user needs, Stamford are adept at both making sense of, and managing, the big picture for our clients.
Web brand management
Web Brand Management involves understanding and translating your brand in the online world. This involves a holistic appreciation of not only the visual and content aspect of your website but also the interactive level and how this all impacts on user perception and overall brand.
Providing an online presence exposes the brand to a new range of perceptions and expectations around usability, accessibility and content values. User experiences online have an impact on sales, credibility and brand perception potentially impacting on adjacent communication channels such as email or your call centre.
At Stamford we ensure that the solutions we recommend both inform and are informed by the overall brand profile, producing an online asset, rather than a digital liability.