Information Architecture, Interaction Design

Challenge
Hewlett Packard was developing a consumer photo management application to ship with their desktop PCs. This tool would allow users to view, edit, crop, print and email their digital photos. For this project, there were many small photo applications already being developed by teams throughout the world with no concern for a consistent user experience. Because of the diversity of teams and locations, company politics had become an issue. The product manager needed assistance reminding the team that the product goal was to have a single application with a consistent customer experience.

Process
HP asked Elson User Experience to provide a consistent information architecture and user interaction style across the entire product regardless of how the user was manipulating their digital photos. After performing a heuristic analysis on the existing prototypes, an information architecture was created. The final deliverable was a consistency document with actionable wireframes and flow recommendations that could be developed by the engineering team.

Results
Rather than having a consumer photo application where the interaction style changed depending on the feature being used, the Elson UE designs provided HP with a consistent user experience regardless of the tasks users were performing with their photos. With clear, objective 3rd party recommendations, the product manager was able to get buy in from the diverse teams to make HP Image Zone a consistent experience.

Usability Study, Heuristic Review,
Competitive Analysis

Challenge
Access points to the eBay help system were implemented inconsistently across eBay.com and the related Web properties. This problem was the result of many properties being designed in silos independently of each other without a single set of help access guidelines. The consequence was that it was often difficult for new users to find links to the help system. In the online auction business where new users are very tentative about participating, making sure everyone could locate the help system was a key business concern.

Process
Elson UE first performed an expert analysis of the current help access points, noting inconsistencies and situations where best practices were not used. The analysis was followed by a usability study to better understand the help access links new users were able to discover, those that they were unable to find, and the types of links and positioning they would prefer. Actionable recommendations from the expert analysis and usability study were delivered to eBay. A competitive analysis of help access points on other sites was carried out to ensure that recommendations fell within industry standards.

Results
The Elson UE deliverables allowed eBay to create a site-wide help access style guide that was based on user observations and best practices. On a site like eBay.com where both customers and product teams feel strongly about keeping the status quo, having user data to support changes was necessary.

Information Architecture, Interaction Design,
UI Specification

Challenge
Motorola needed to quickly design a new 3G phone for Japanese carrier NTT Docomo. The phone had to be designed within Motorola's software constraints and also Docomo's design guidelines and network requirements.

Process
Elson User Experience quickly integrated with the Motorola engineering and design teams. We led the designs for the Telephony and Video Telephony (2 way video conferencing) features. Wireframes, information architecture, and interaction flows were included in the formal Motorola user interface specification delivered at the completion of the project.

Results
Despite joining the project well after it had already began, we quickly adapted our design methodologies to match Motorola's internal process. Complex specifications that met Motorola and Docomo requirements were delivered on schedule and to customer satisfaction.

Information Architecture, Interaction Design,
Heuristic Analysis, UI Specification

Challenge
Poor usability was having a business impact on eHarmony Marriage, an online interactive marriage wellness program for couples. Despite being very motivated to work on their marriage, customers were having difficulty discovering the large amount of useful text and video content provided by the service. The site's content and navigation system were poorly organized. The eHarmony product team believed the value of the program was being obscured by these usability issues.

Process
After a thorough review and feature mapping of the existing system, Elson UE designed a new information architecture for the eHarmony Marriage Program. The next step was to flesh out the IA by creating an interactive wireframe prototype. The low fidelity prototype allowed the product team to get a feel for how customers would interact with the new design and discover content. The project was completed upon delivery of a UI specification to be used by visual designers, engineers, and QA.

Results
The new design highlighted the core value of the Marriage Program by providing customers with scaled content and a flexible navigation system. The team was able to move forward with the development of a new, more useable version of the service.

Information Architecture, Interaction Design,
UI Specification

Challenge
Customer Service Representatives (CSR) in the high net worth client group at Charles Schwab have different needs than other representatives. In order to attract and maintain their demanding clients, they must provide the highest level of service and also be able to open and modify special types of accounts. Before this project, opening preferred accounts was a very difficult task for the CSRs that involved jumping between several disconnected applications.

Process
Elson User Experience was hired to assist the product management team with generating realistic product requirements that met customer's needs and could be developed by the engineering team within the project schedule. Our discussions with CSRs helped clarify user needs. Wireframes, information flows, and user interface specifications were created to express the product requirements in a way that could be developed by the engineering team.

Results
Through an iterative series of designs and reviews, Elson UE delivered clear designs for the new task flow that was consistent with Schwab corporate design guidelines and also allowed CSRs to perform the task of opening preferred accounts in a single application. Our work ensured that the project could move forward on schedule while meeting user needs.

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Usability Study

Challenge
The Yahoo! Personals design team created a prototype for a new Personals user experience. The most important changes were around navigation and allowing users to more quickly scan other people's profiles. There were many design decisions that went into the making of the prototype. Some of the design choices were based upon anecdotal user feedback while other decisions were derived from the team's assumptions about their customers.

Process
Elson User Experience designed and performed a formal usability study of the Yahoo! Personals prototype. The study focused on the discoverability and usability of the new types of navigation. The goal was to determine whether the team's assumptions about user behavior were correct.

Results
The findings in the formal usability report supported some of the design team's assumptions while invalidated others. The design team was able to take the actionable recommendations from the report to iterate their design before launching the new version.

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Usability Study

Challenge
Through previous research, the Yahoo! Search Marketing product team had found that signing up for and using the Search Marketing interface was confusing for many customers. In response, the team created a tutorial for new Search Marketing customers that would explain the purpose of the service and how to use it.

Process
A formal usability study was performed on the new tutorial by Elson UE as part of a larger research project. Participant comprehension of the tutorial and desirability of the new content was evaluated.

Results
Based on the final report, the Yahoo! Search Marketing product team was provided with a clear understanding of their target customer's interaction with the new tutorial. The actionable recommendations gave the team a way to improve the tutorial even further.

Focus Group, Ethnogrpahic Field Study, Competitive Analysis

Challenge
LG Electronics was interested in a new genre of activity based mobile consumer applications. Rather than designing a product on what they thought the customer would want, the design team needed to know specific customer expectations, preferences, interests and feelings about the potential product before they could create their new application. The designers knew that if the product were to succeed, it had to strongly appeal to the target market segment about which they had little information.

Process
While there were competitive products available, none of those were for the mobile communications market that interested LG. Elson User Experience recommended a series of ethnographic field studies and focus groups. The field studies were used to collect information about how the competitive products were used during their intended activities. The field studies allowed for direct observation of participant behaviors with similar devices. The focus groups provided data about participants' preferences and interests. Through brainstorming and ideation sessions, information was collected about which features should be included in LG's product.

Results
The final report provided specific recommendations based on the user data collected. From the report, LG was able to understand which features the new application should and should not include. The report created a solid, fact based starting point for the design and product marketing teams.

Usability Study

Challenge
Nissan engaged a design firm to redesign NissanUSA.com with several new high bandwidth features. The design prototype had a new navigation and information organization that had not been user tested with customers.

Process
Elson UE was hired to perform a series of usability studies that focused on general usability, navigation, and discoverability/learnability of the new features.

Results
Through each usability study, Nissan and the design firm were able to identify areas for improvement. For example, only a few of the participants enjoyed the high bandwidth videos displayed on the prototype site. As a result, a decision was made to let customers choose whether they wanted to watch the videos rather than have it automatically load when a page is accessed.

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Information Architecture, Interaction Design,
UI Specification

Challenge
Trend Micro identified an opportunity for a gateway security server (integrated firewall and email) for the SMB market. Trend had several large enterprise security servers which were highly technical, but no offering for smaller companies. Despite being highly technical in nature, this new product had to be especially easy to use. The target user would not be an IT professional, but "might be an accounting person who was technical and would run the server as a secondary responsibility." Trend appreciated the importance of being the first mover in a new product space, so the server had a very small window of time to be designed and shipped.

Process
After reviewing the existing technology and competitive hardware solutions, Elson UE worked with a small, nimble team consisting of the product manager, engineering lead, and the Elson UE designer to flesh out the marketing requirements document. The information organization, which was iteratively designed with review from the small working team, became the basis for the product's high level navigation. An HTML prototype was created to allow for hands on interaction with the product as the iterations continued. Finally, the new Trend visual design style was applied and the prototype was ready to become the front end for the new product.

Results
With Elson UE's expert assistance, Trend Micro was able to meet its own aggressive goals of creating a new product within 4 months. Elson UE's ownership of the product's user experience allowed the team to move quickly without requiring any of Trend's internal designers who were committed to other projects. Trend Micro InterScan VirusWall SMB received excellent ease of use reviews and became the design basis for the rest of Trend's enterprise security servers.

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Usability Study

Challenge
Trend Micro developed a suite of security products for the mobile, online consumer that would be accessed through the new TrendSecure Web site. Many of the features were new concepts that target users had never seen before such as cell phone antivirus, an online transaction guard, and file encryption.

Process
A usability study was performed by Elson UE on the TrendSecure Web site and its new features. Several of the features were in the early design phase, so portions of the study were run using paper prototypes.

Results
The user data collected helped Trend Micro to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of their TrendSecure offering. Elson UE's actionable recommendations provided the design team with a list of improvement priorities.

Usability Study

Challenge
The design firm responsible for redesigned the Chef's Catalog Web site had several information architectures, design layouts, and interaction style concepts that had not been tested with actual users. Considering the importance of the Web store front to Chef's Catalog, the new design required first hand user observation before the design could be implemented.

Process
A formal usability study of the Chef's Catalog design prototype was designed and performed by Elson User Experience. Users with a range of different genders, ethnicities, income levels and cooking experience were asked to perform typical tasks with the prototype.

Results
The final report contained many findings about aspects of the prototype site that were successful and actionable recommendations for features that performed poorly. This information allowed the design firm to iterate on the prototype before delivering it to Chefs Catalog for development.