Devise features Interaction Design services supported by development.
The Devise team collaborates well, communicates clearly, and integrates nicely with your processes. Chief Design Officer Elizabeth Bacon applies her Interaction Design expertise to understand users' needs & goals, create personas, define requirements, and conceive desirable & feasible products. Chief Technology Officer Mike McAulay provides high-quality engineering services and can lead or support your development staff. With our combined expertise we aim to delight users of your products and make your company succeed.
Here are the principal services we offer:
User Research
How do you know what to build? We conduct rapid field research to discover the behaviors and critical goals driving your target users. Studying and talking with people in context lets us define solid, data-driven personas that capture and reveal key workflows, mental models and contexts of use. These deep, insightful user models help inform your team and prioritize product requirements so your business can head quickly in the right direction.
Product Conception
Do you sometimes feel as if magical powers are required to define and design interactive products? Without resorting to any hat tricks we apply a proven, scenario-based approach to Interaction Design. You'll get stellar innovation, and learn from the process. This service applies the full breadth & depth of our design expertise in order to conceive the proper features, forms & behaviors of your service or product. This service can extend into Detailed Design to increase the fidelity of the design framework and provide user interface specifications.
Hands-On Training
This quick, customized training session introduces members of your organization to the basic processes of User Research & Interaction Design and then collaboratively applies these methods to an actual situation you're facing. Tailored to your specific needs, the first half focuses on information exchange and the second half focuses on working through a real-world challenge using newly-introduced techniques and approaches.
Interactive Prototyping
We produce high-quality interactive prototypes that clearly communicate product solutions to your technical stakeholders and customers. An interactive prototype presents a compelling story of the product vision that inspires your team and secures stakeholder buy-in. Rapid, iterative prototyping facilitates decision-making.
Technical Design
Communicating your product design to the development team can be a challenge, especially when they're located remotely. Bridging the gap between the worlds of design and engineering is a Devise specialty. We'll translate design documents into an actionable set of technical specifications tailored to your development team's processes. Let's make sure your high-quality design is never lost in translation.
Custom Software Development
Do you have a strange or unique technical need that's not addressed by off-the-shelf software? Do you have a novel concept that you want to bring to life? We thrive on solving unusual technical problems. If it can be done with code then we can do it, so drop us a line!
Two quick ways Devise could help your business thrive:
Design Audits
Do you have a questionable product currently under development, or have an existing product or service whose weaknesses are costing you business? We conduct expert heuristic evaluations of your systems to identify points of pain as well as strength. We'll recommend specific, incremental improvements to the user experience with an emphasis on those likely to offer the best cost/benefit ratio.
Technology Audits
We'll bring our eagle-eyed technical expertise to bear on your released or in-progress software projects. We'll give you a thorough, unbiased assessment of the quality of the code, as well as your tool chain and build process. We'll point out areas with the greatest opportunity for improvement, and highlight where you're doing things right. We currently offer this service for software written in C, C++, PHP, Python and Ruby.
Two advanced services to enable long-term success:
Interaction Design Training
We provide in-depth training to teach members of your organization how to perform effective user research and synthesize findings into desirable and feasible product requirements. Our powerful interaction design methodology uses a flexible, scenario-based approach that will help your team define products that exceed customers' expectations. We also consider your organization's development process in order to customize training sessions and address the specific needs of your team.
Software Project Management
We have years of real-world experience shepherding development teams to successful product launches. Software can be shipped on-time and under-budget! What it takes is good planning, communication, and the right set of best practices. We'll work with your design and development teams to ensure your product comes to market successfully. We're very comfortable working with remote and distributed teams, as well.
Devise can handle very technical domains; Liz has extensive experience designing for heavily-regulated medical devices and Mike has a background in video game development. If you are a non-profit public health concern, please inquire about discounts. Contact us now, or read more about Devise, including case studies and example project flows...