Creating user experiences people love.
User experience design is at the core of Lushai's practice. We think user experience design is hard, and we take it seriously. Because of this some of New Zealand's best known organisations trust us with their most important websites, intranets, apps and online services. In User experience design we take the big question of ‘What do we need to do for our customers?’ and add ‘How will we do it?’.
Every process is different depending on the organisation and project but our most common approach happens like this:
Lushai projects are collaborative. In the planning stage we work with you to identify what your organisation needs from us to make the project a success. We establish budgets, deadlines, stakeholder needs, technical needs and process. Different types of organisations have different needs and getting this right sets the project up for success.
At the start off the project we make sure we have everything we need to make your project a success. We make sure we understand your business and how our project supports it. Typically we identify if more user research needs to be done, if we can work from the user insight that already exists or if we should take a leaner approach and work from assumptions testing high risk areas once we have a formative design. We make sure everything we need is in place or that we have a strategy to deal with information that we can’t obtain.
Our user research service is often used in this phase.
For complex projects we define a design strategy, identifying the high level assumptions and design principles that will guide the design process. This helps us create a framework for you to judge the effectiveness of the design as we proceed, forces undeclared assumptions to the front and helps us when validating our designs with users.
Our design phase is cyclical and iterative. We work out initial design possibilities through user journeys or by creating early design mockups and help you to critique and validate these through assessment frameworks and prototype testing. We refine and add detail to our designs as we go, collaborating with technical providers, stakeholders and users to ensure that design works once exposed to real users. In this phase we are creating and refining information architecture, interaction design and graphic design. These may take the form of sitemaps, annotated wireframes, graphic design files or style guides. We either work with your development team to integrate our designs directly, fold into your development sprints, deliver detailed design specifications or deliver front end code depending on your needs.
We usually test the design at pivotal parts of the design process. We take design prototypes and expose them to real users. This allows us to reduce the risk of design failure and to be more innovative by testing new ideas on real people and seeing if they float.
Learn more about our user testing service.
We don’t hand over our design and run away with fingers crossed. We support you during the development and make sure you have the training and support you need to ensure your product continues to deliver over time. You also get access to relevant UX Gym courses to make sure you have the capabilities to continue to develop and refine your project.
Helping make hazardous workplaces safer with user centered design.
Read the case study
Designing for teachers with the Ministry of Education.
Read the case study