Back
Fifteen years ago, building a website for a client was straightforward. It needed a great design, blog functionality, a contact page with a map, and some way to update content. Times were simple, measurement was almost non-existent, and UX was neolithic. Today’s clients demand more. They need digital platforms that predict users’ needs. They want to create omnichannel engagement opportunities and build brand affinity. Fortunately, we have developed new tools and processes to help answer today’s demands. Here’s a peek at how we blend creativity and technology to solve modern problems for our partners.
Research and Insights
The best teams are good communicators. We start by listening to our clients and their users because we need to understand and define the problem. The knowledge gained during this discussion allows us to develop goals, personas and metrics. This information becomes a touchpoint we look back on during the course of a project. With a clear and focused understanding, we can establish our approach and begin applying our creativity.
Imagine and Iterate
Creative explorations are where ideas are born and assessed against goals and metrics. Many ideas get left on the floor, but the strongest move on to design sprints and sometimes prototyping. While we rely on research to reach this point, what users say and what they do are often very different. Testing our ideas and designs against the actual audience is where the fruit of our labor becomes evident. Sometimes we nail it on the first pass, sometimes our hypotheses don’t bear out … but we iterate until we get it right.
Testing and iterating ideas isn’t a new concept, but there is a breadth of online tools available today (UsabilityHub, UserTesting, Optimizely, Hotjar, and more) which make validation more accessible and turnkey than ever before.
Building and Collaborating
We don’t exist in a vacuum and our teams can’t do their best work in silos. Collaboration between designers and developers is encouraged throughout the entire process. It’s common to have ad hoc conversations to raise questions and revise solutions. Any changes are constantly checked against our goals and metrics to ensure we’re creating the most engaging experience possible.
Once we’ve built the digital experience it goes live and the problem is solved, right? Not exactly. Launching an experience is only the start of the journey. Great digital experiences are not fire-and-forget. They require regular monitoring of analytics, reviews of traffic patterns, and adjustments to design and copy to continually improve the user experience and reach goals.
Why it Helps
Our approach is designed to reduce risks and pitfalls of uninformed and unchecked digital creative by validating and iterating concepts against users and goals. It takes the guessing out of creative and ensures, through measurement, our proposed solutions are working as hard as they can.