User Experience Strategy is a very exciting part of the process. Determining strategy, including conducting of user research, might be considered a lengthy process. We are currently developing a methodology for focusing our strategy stage to make it work for projects that don't allow the luxury of an extended ethnographic research phase.

We typically start with an extensive task analysis which alone can lead to great insight into core differences in behavior and meaningful segementaiton of our user base. If time allows, we continue with user interviews, mental models, personas and gap analysis for features.

Having gathered product requirements from all available sources, including stakeholder interviews, we process all of this information and organize it into a feature and funcitonailty matrix that outlines the scope of the project and breaks all features down by phase of development. The creation of this document usually results in powerful clarity regarding the scope of the project, as well as the prioritization of features.

In this step we lay down the framework of the website by constructing site maps, site flows, diagrams, and navigational models.

Wireframes communicate product design and functionality to stakeholders and team members. During page-level design we start with developing concepts through sketches and page breakdowns and continue to flesh them out into complete wireframes, typically going through several interations until all functionality is portrayed with optimal usability.

Once core functionality is agreed upon, we add tremendous value to the project by creating comrehensive and informative function specifications, thinking through the vast majority of use cases and tying up all loose ends. Engineers appreciate this final deliverable because they find that most of their potential questions are anticipated and addressed, helping them focus on the optimal technical implementation.

This page captures our generalized approach to User Experience Design. Naturally, our process is customized to the needs of each project. We pick and choose the most appropriate approach and deliverables based on the goals, context and constraints of each situation.