Personas are documents that demonstrate your different user groups’ profiles. A persona represents a set of users who are carrying out the same task or are from the same demographic grouping.

Demonstrating your different customer profiles

Personas facilitate discussion between stakeholders about their users’ needs. Typically, every team member will have copies of the personas and will refer to them throughout a problem, and ask themselves and other team members about whether or not their product is meeting the users’ needs: ‘Would Caroline be able to use this?’

Your users are people

Personas help everyone on a team to remember that the users of their products are real individuals who have needs and requirements. The level of fidelity used on a persona will vary. Some are minimal – featuring a name, picture, and rough description of the tasks those users carry out. Richer, more detailed personas may have more in-depth information about the individual, such as background, lifestyle and personal life.

Task modelling builds on the user requirements we uncover in research and turns them into process flows that match the expected steps and content needs.

Developing a site around a well researched task model can have dramatic increases in the performance of that site. For example, the task modelling work we did for Island Cruises increased online sales by 350% overnight, and took monthly sales from £10,000 to £1,000,000 within a 15 month period.

Showing businesses how they need to support the customer

Task models show where users require iteration around a process. It’s not uncommon for users to want to adjust a shopping cart or quote page based on their specific requirements. This adjusting activity may take seconds or extend out over several weeks depending on the size and complexity of the purchase. Our task models show businesses how they need to support the user through these steps.

Task models help the management, design and development teams understand the process and functionality required to help the user. This helps to align the project team with a single vision for how the site should behave and increases the ability of the team to create a perfected user experience.

It allows our clients to get an in-depth view of their customers’ motivations and behaviours, putting them into the context of their day-to-day lives at home, in the work place or out and about.

cxpartners approach to ethnography

Typically, cxpartners runs ethnographic studies over a period of days or weeks, but we also run light observational studies on location lasting just a day or two.

Fieldwork-based research

The ethnographic research we run for clients usually forms part of an investigation into the performance of their brand online. The approach cxpartners uses to conduct ethnographic research varies from project to project and may include:

• Diary studies
• Audio or video journals
• Home visits
• Regular depth interviews
• Field based observation
• Work shadowing
• Call centre listening

Why use ethnography?

Ethnography gives our clients a depth of research that isn’t easily achievable in task interviews or user testing sessions.

Observing users over a period of time enables us to understand the broad range of influences that affect a user’s decision making process. We can see first hand how they research, refine, iterate, discuss and ultimately make decisions.

It’s important to appreciate that learnings from field research directly affect online design decisions. For example, we can uncover:

• Directions for digital visions and strategies
• Content requirements
• Process decisions
• Pitfalls to avoid
• Where users are open to marketing and sales messages (and where they’re not)

Ethnographic results

Following fieldwork, cxpartners will write a detailed report on the behaviour witnessed during the study and highlight key behavioural trends and what they mean to your brand or website.

We’ll analyse the results from the research and provide you with recommendations for how your website can be developed or updated so it fits better with your audience’s models of behaviour.

We’ve seen how ethnographic research can give our clients a better understanding of who their audience is and through our analysis have discovered new ways to appeal to this group of users.

Online surveys provide a cost effective method of gaining feedback from a large audience. Surveys enable cxpartners to identify broad issues with a website or product that we can investigate further.

They allow us to gather feedback from users on their level of satisfaction and can provide better understanding of the position of a brand next to its competitors.

Relevant and strategic recommendations

cxpartners offers a flexible survey creation and management service that we tailor to our client’s individual needs.

The data is then analysed and we provide written reports that have actionable recommendations based on the results of the survey.

Why cxpartners?

Our knowledge of user experience enables us to create and run compelling surveys that users can easily complete. This understanding allows us to provide relevant and strategic recommendations alongside the survey data.

The online surveys cxpartners run frequently complement other stages within the lifecycle of a usability review. The statistical data supplied can help inform business case decisions.

Designing for context

As smartphones and tablets become increasingly ubiquitous, it becomes more important than ever to consider the unique user behavior and context that comes with these devices.

We work with our clients to design solutions appropriate to the needs of your customers, whether that be an adaptive design, a fully responsive design, a web app or a native app.

Award-winning design for devices of all sizes

Beautiful interfaces for smaller devices

We approach mobile interface design in a very similar way to how we approach designing for desktop.

Following the intial design workshop we work closely with our clients to produce a creative concept that will meet the needs identified earlier in the project and stay true to the existing brand.

The concept is then typically rolled out to a number of key templates as identified during the wireframing process.

To support the ongoing maintenence and updating of the site or app we often produce detailed Style Guide documents that outline the visual language used in the creative concept, including typography guidelines, grid system details, imagery styles, colour schemes, and any specific technical information that may be applicable.

Ensuring design fidelity

In the past we observed a number of projects being let down by less than perfect frontend implementation, so we decided to start doing it ourselves.

Ensuring the best possible customer experience

Our developers work very closely with our tech-savvy designers to ensure that the the frontend of the website or app is as beautiful as the designs created during the Art direction process.

Clients such as Charles Tyrwhitt (whose site won a National eCommerce Award for ‘Relaunch of the year’ following our work for them) have found that being able to hand over this technically demanding part of the process to us has enabled them to focus on their key area of expertise.

Great code, ready to go

Our clients get hand-coded, valid, accessible, semantic HTML, hack-free, clearly ordered and documented CSS, and robust, customisable Javascript.

CMS technical specs are identified early on in the process and all development work carried out accordingly.

Implementation support is provided on an ongoing basis to ensure the ‘plugging in’ phase goes as smoothly as possible.

Award-winning multi-device design

We design beautiful, functional, award-winning creative solutions for multi-device websites and apps.

Our projects range in scale from providing all of the visual design for large-scale eCommerce relaunches to adding finesse and clarity to individual pages on existing sites.

An extension of our UX process

Design that enables the customer experience

Typically a Creative Director or Senior Designer will be involved from early workshops onwards, in order to be fully immersed in the project and to ensure the insights and knowledge gained throughout the UX process are carried over into the visual design.

Following the initial design workshop we work closely with our clients to produce a creative concept that will meet the needs identified earlier in the project and stay true to the existing brand.

The concept is then typically rolled out to a number of key templates as identified during the wireframing process.

To support the ongoing maintenance and updating of the site or app we often produce detailed Style Guide documents that outline the visual language used in the creative concept, including typography guidelines, grid system details, imagery styles, colour schemes, and any specific technical information that may be applicable.

Our design workshops are run at the outset of our design phase in order to uncover insights that will inform the creative process.

Unearthing preconceptions, insights and knowledge

Depending on the specific requirements of the project we will undertake reviews of your existing brand identity implementation, identify key values that will define the aesthetic, put key stakeholder through eye-opening ‘gut tests’ and compare moodboard representations of current and future visual languages.

We keep things short, sharp and focused, keeping the aim of the workshop in mind at all times.

Uncovering expectations

A productive design workshop (combined with the output of the previous phases) arms our team with all the insights and knowledge they need to produce a visual solution that meets the needs of the business and customers.

Wireframes give the project team the first glimpse of the product and how it will work. They are the place to try ideas out – and the right place to make mistakes and try again.

We start with rapid sketches to help visualise and clarify our thinking, and as the ideas take shape we increase the fidelity, iteratively validating with your customers to ensure that the solutions are clear and usable.

Detailed wireframe design

cxpartners gives the right weighting and emphasis to the elements on the page, making sure the important things are prioritised and easier to find – crucial when we’re wireframing designs that need to work whatever technology is being used.

We include detailed descriptions to explain how the interaction will work, so that the ideal user experience makes it all the way through to production.

Our wireframes make sure that the ideal user experience is validated early in the project process and taken right through to your final product.

Our approach to information architecture ensures that we communicate your products and services in a way that customers understand.

Putting together the site structure

We start to collect content requirements from the beginning of the project – from information you’ve give us, by auditing your current content and by reviewing what your competitors do. We’ll work with you to group and prioritise this information making sure that the focus is on the most important stuff.

Conversations with your customers draw out what they’re looking for, how they think, and the language they use.

We’ll use this knowledge to put together the site structure.

Card sorting will validate that we’ve got it right, so that when someone uses your product they’ll know where they are and where to find what they’re after.