design

User-centred design

Epic web puts the user at the centre of our design process. At the beginning of a project, user research is carried out to identify, define and profile the target audience. This research is encompassed within the project requirements analysis stage.

User profiling can be carried out in a number of ways. Epic's design team will often develop a set of personas or user scenarios that can be applied to test the design and the developed site. At key points in our production process, called Epiclabs, we review the design against the original project requirements and those of the users.

Our experience in developing these personas and defining our users requirements has helped us to successfully create exciting, engaging and intuitive designs for a very diverse range of audiences. For example, consulting and understanding the requirements of teenagers and students through focus groups helped us design and build a useful, well-visited site called All About You for this notoriously fickle group of potential users.

Designing for usability

Epic's design team are experienced in devising and conducting usability reviews of websites; all Lead Designers have been trained in usability techniques and adhering to web design standards. Often the main usability challenges for websites are:

• making the sites 'sticky' and pleasing to use.
• retaining and supporting existing users.
• ensuring the site provides clear signposts to users as to where information is held.
• allowing users to understand where they are within the site and how they can reach related information.

To combat these challenges, we use our experience (and the results of user testing) to collaborate with our clients on the design of an exciting and stimulating interface, whilst ensuring that the information architecture of the site is clear, and that common paths through the site are supported.

Epic understands the need for a site to be developed for the end-user rather than the information provider. We also appreciate the need for strong design leadership on projects as we have found that 'design by committee' or by technical teams can compromise the usability of a website.

We encourage all of our designers to take a usability-championing role on large projects such as Houses of Parliament, HERO and smaller projects for information providers with many stakeholders such as Chichester District Council.