Grapes technologies

User Research

Before you start designing solutions, you need to understand your audience and get to know the end-users who will be working with this solution. Below is an example of our user research services that help you to precisely identify the needs of your users and show you how to improve your website, intranet or other web application.

Focus Groups

A focus group involves encouraging an invited group of actual users of a site to share their thoughts, feelings, attitudes and ideas on a certain subject. Focus groups are most often used as an input to design. They are a good means of getting information about people’s work, user likes and dislikes, etc…

Interviews

An interview usually involves one interviewer speaking to one participant at a time. The advantages of an interview are that a participant's unique point of view can be explored in detail. It is also the case that any misunderstandings between the interviewer and the participant are likely to be quickly identified and addressed. Interviews are usually scheduled early in the design process in order to gather high level requirements such as business objectives or processes.

Usability Testing

Usability testing sessions evaluate a site by collecting data from people as they use it. A person is invited to attend a session in which they'll be asked to perform a series of tasks while a moderator takes note of any difficulties they encounter. You can also time users to see how long it takes them to complete tasks, which is a good measure of efficiency (although you should bear in mind that using the 'think aloud' protocol will slow users down considerably). Usability testing can be used as an input to design or at the end of a project. It represents an excellent way to find out what the most likely usability problems with a site are.

Card Sorting

Card sorting is a method for suggesting intuitive structures/categories. A participant is presented with an unsorted pack of index cards. Each card has a statement written on it that relates to a page of the site. The participant is asked to sort these cards into groups and then to name these groups. The results of multiple individual sorts are then combined and analyzed statistically. Card sorting is usually used as an input to design. It's an excellent way of suggesting good categories for a site content and deriving its information architecture.

Persona Creation

A persona is a fictional character representing one particular user group and is created after rigorously analyzing and categorizing data from user research. Personas provide powerful (yet quick and simple) guidance for any website strategy and planning decisions. They capture the most important information about each user group such as goals, behavior, motivations, needs, pain-points, among others.