In order to ensure long-term acceptance of a user interface, it must be optimally adapted to real user requirements. Centigrade’s usability engineering services support you in ensuring user-friendliness right from the start and throughout a project without making compromises regarding functionality and business goals. This applies to new developments as well as to the revision of existing user interfaces.

Expert review and usability test: assessing usability

By timely assessing the usability of a user interface, cost-intensive revisions in later project phases can be avoided.

An expert review serves to uncover violations of established usability guidelines. To do so, Centigrade's usability experts evaluate the user interface in question against the background of usability guidelines and best practices in order to identify potential for optimization and provide detailed recommendations for improvement.

In case of a very complex and specialized application, where an expert review might not be sufficient, Centigrade conducts a usability test. For this test, representative users are asked to execute practice-relevant tasks with the user interface — either in the usability laboratory or at their usual workplaces. By carefully observing and analyzing these interactions, Centigrade is able to uncover weaknesses of the user interface and can offer precise solutions for the problems that have been found.

Centigrade's services can be used in the starting phase of a project as well as to accompany a user interface design project. Centigrade's services provide you with the basis for creating a state-of-the-art user interface and allow you to precisely control and adjust the course of the project — e.g. through a quick usability test or a focused expert review.

User task analysis and contextual analysis:
eliciting requirements

The fact that users do not complain does not necessarily mean that the software is perfectly suited for their requirements.

By conducting a user task analysis, practice-relevant user requirements are elicited. Often, these requirements diverge from the information that is contained in work descriptions, manuals and the like. In other words: the manner in which a system is actually used can differ significantly from the way it was intended to be used. Informal conversations or market research do not necessarily reveal the complete picture. Users develop workarounds to certain problems or accept shortcomings of a system. To a certain extent, users are not explicitly aware of work steps and thus these steps cannot be reported even though they are critical for interaction.

In a contextual analysis Centigrade observes users at their workplaces to investigate which key factors affect the user-system interaction. Examples for such influences are environmental noise-level and ambient brightness. These analysis are complemented by structured interviews, which provide a comprehensive picture of processes in the real context of work and of essential requirements of practical relevance.

Centigrade's services ensure that all information that is relevant for the creation of the user interface is made available in a timely manner.

Interaction Design: Foundation of User Interface Design

A user interface that is simply beautiful is just not good enough. In order to support the user in the best possible way and to guarantee long-term satisfaction, interaction and dynamic behavior have to be well-conceived.

Ideally, interaction design is the foundation for all subsequent phases of user interface design. Amongst other things, the basic screen layout is captured in wireframes and workflows as well as detail-interactions with controls are defined through storyboards. This approach concretizes structure and dynamic behavior of the user interface so that they can be discussed and optimally adjusted.

Centigrade has the expertise to create sound interaction designs in an economical manner in order to quickly provide the foundation for project success and user-friendly interfaces early on.

Scalable usability engineering

Each user is different — and also each user interface design project has its specific dynamics and constraints.

If, e.g., new "pain points" arise during a project due to modifications of the technical infrastructure, this has to be evaluated and assessed in order to promptly provide an optimal solution. By continuously monitoring the relevant constraints, Centigrade ensures that no resources are wasted on unworkable approaches.

In consultation with you, Centigrade optimally scales the approaches of user task analysis, expert review or usability test to be able to react flexibly to your specific project requirements and changes during the course of the project.