Monthly Archives: February 2012

The Testing User report puts usability right

After searching this morning on Google there’s no doubt in my mind that the Usability Testing market has become quite a crowded place. Yes there seems to be no shortage of academics, experts, mad scientists and teenagers sat in their bedroom offering you their take on what your business needs to do to ensure the best Usability experience possible. I don’t want to sound like I am exaggerating because there are no way near as many providers as if you were to search for something like Poker or web design but you can defiantly choose from a choice of Usability methodology from people who have carried out Usability Testing all the way from the Sahara Dessert to Louisville Kentucky.

Of course though this is at a price and doing a little Usability Testing market research, Testing Users took a chance. We purchased five User Testing report PDF’s which worked out at an average of $189 with the cheapest being $148.

I guess I’m doing more comparative competitor analysis than I am doing market research, sure these are the other products we compete against but I’m not sure if this is the Testing User competition as such. Read more »

Service Design – A Vital Tool in Building up Profits

What is Service Design?

Service Design is a new discipline that earned stellar prominence as an essential technology by making businesses highly acceptable in their market niches, internally and emotionally delighting their customers. It also results in efficiency in all aspects of the business’s operation redounding to cost-savings that spell out profits.

Let’s be honest. We know that Service Design is primarily taken on for the business. While it also genuinely takes customer satisfaction into consideration, the business is the primary beneficiary of its advantages in the form of assured and increased income. Even if customer satisfaction is removed from the picture, the business can still survive albeit with lower sales. But if profits do not happen in a business, it will surely collapse. That is why businesses innovate. And the best innovation to date is, you guessed it: Service Design. Read more »

Web Design Font and Colour Tips

Or those of us who aren’t designers or artistic picking colors and fonts can be a daunting task. It seems impossible to know which colors will be bold enough to stand out as a brand color but aesthetically pleasing enough to stare at on a screen. Fonts are just as tricky. There are so many options but everyone seems to use very similar fonts, why is that?

Color is not just for decoration, it sends a message about the kind of company you are and the kind of customers you are targeted to. Color is an important psychological trigger. For example, purple signifies luxury and royalty, white is clean and modern, green in money, go and also linked with nature.

It can be important to consider the cultural implications of color in relation to your main target market. In the west white is linked to cleanliness but in many Asian countries white is also the color linked with the rituals for the dead. In some Asian countries red is the color of marriage but for others it still has links to communism. Colors should be assessed according to market and your product. Read more »