Website Design & Usability

Website Design & Usability

Website Design / Redesign

Our design team have been nominated for numerous prestigious creative awards over the past few years. We not only have the experience within the team but also the freshness that has given us national recognition for our sites.

We are able to take existing and established branding and produce sites that make people look again. They appeal to both loyal customers and also the new markets the business is looking to break into.

Building the Relationship with Your Users by Understanding Their Needs

Affinity undertakes human factors task analysis that guides our information architects and designers. Understanding audiences through psychographic, demographic and behavioral lenses we account for varying user contingencies ensuring appeal and ease of use in our designs.

Information Architecture

Affinity’s Information Architects use the results from in-depth analysis to layout a project's information architecture. Utilising tools like site maps, workflows, prototypes and digital mock-ups we create a project's information architecture and user interface with the knowledge and understanding of how the cognitive needs of the user impact the total experience.

Interface Development

With the information architecture understood, Affinity’s design team turns to creating the user interface. We are experts in architecting and designing User Interfaces that empower and inspire the customer to complete tasks effortlessly, quickly. Intuitively designed applications enlighten and educate users.

Brand Integration - Build Brand Equity Online

Whether we are designing for an existing brand or creating a new one, Affinity excels as a 'steward of the brand'. Our experience and pre-project research helps us centre on what kind of visual branding strategy is desirable for the audiences who will be interacting with your site or product.

Our designs appeal to many different users across a variety of industries. This unifying quality in our work results in greater product utilisation, longer design lifetimes and better ROI for our clients.

The entire design and production processes are managed through our development servers, which act as the aggregation point for all information related to a project. Clients see in real-time project status and deliverable schedules. By applying as much thought to process as we do to design, we insure exceptional engagements with our clients.

Affinity have also worked with numerous clients to help create their branding and to build a web solution around this.

We have enjoyed great success working with both established and new companies and can offer a comprehensive, cost-effective and unique design package to ensure online profitability.

Usability

All of the Affinity design team are experienced in designing websites with usability as the cornerstone of good design practise.

Affinity working processes for design maintains that users should be considered throughout the website design process. Usability should is not an afterthought. Testing and fixing a website after it has been built is inefficient and unlikely to produce good results. The Affinity design team incorporate a model of "pervasive usability" into all design and production processes.

The benefits of planning usability into any given project are:

• Increased end-user satisfaction
• Increased end-user productivity, success, and completion
• Reduced long-term development costs (costs incurred from fixing poorly designed products)
• Reduced training and support costs
• Return business to improve a site’s competitiveness

Affinity operate the following model of "Pervasive Usability" in the website design process:

1. Requirements Analysis

• Determine the goals for the website from the perspective of the user and the business.
• Determine the user needs and target usability requirements.
• Evaluate existing versions of the site.
• Perform a competitive analysis.
• Perform user interviews and surveys.

2. Conceptual Design

• Produce a site design and architecture at an abstract level.
• Conduct a task analysis to find critical features.

3. Mockups / Prototypes

• Rapidly create visual representations (mockups) or interactive representations (prototypes) of the site.
• Evaluate usability through focus groups, user tests and walkthroughs.
• Use the evaluation results to create more mockups or improve the prototypes.
• Repeat this process (design iteration) until the design and usability goals are met.

4. Production

• Create the final product.
• Evaluate functionality through testing, quality assurance, usability testing, and field testing.
• Use the evaluation results to improve the product.
• Repeat this process (production iteration) until the business goals are met.

5. Launch and Maintenance

• Launch the website.
• Maintain and refine with user feedback.
• Use the feedback to create new requirements, and begin major design improvements (system iteration).

Evaluation occurs at every stage of the process. Similar types of evaluation can occur at different stages of the design process to keep in mind the goals of the project and the users' needs.