Our Methodology

Usability Expert Groups

Qualitative Expert groups provide an exploratory environment to understand user’s underlying needs, wants and motivations from an interface.  Group dynamics elicit valuable forums to explore common themes and differences amongst your audience.

Within all groups we keep your objectives at the core of group discussion in order to provide tangible recommendations.


Information Architecture validation

Information Architecture Validation evaluates the effectiveness of your site’s Information Architecture; to what extent can users to locate information without the aid of design aesthetics.

Participants are provided with real life scenarios relating to your site and asked to select from the proposed navigation categories in order to find the information required of each task.

Participants are stepped through each level of site structure and asked to record their selections. When they choose a path that differs from the existing Information Architecture, we prompt reasons for this and ask participants to recommend more appropriate solutions.

Participants are also asked if any labelling was confusing or unintuitive; again participants are asked to suggest more appropriate options.

We recommend that Information Architecture validation is conducted as a combination of focus groups and online survey.  This provides a robust sample size along with the discussion to understand ‘why’.


Distributed user testing

Distributed user testing helps in measuring the ease with which users can complete common tasks on your website. The key benefit of this approach is the opportunity to reach a large sample which provides further evidence of where your design is effective and ineffective.

In distributed tests users are asked to perform tasks on your website and provide feedback from their home or office without anybody to support the use of application. This helps to simulate a real-life scenario and allows running a high number of tests (generally over 100).

Task completion, common paths, number of clicks, time spent on each task and other data is captured for analysis and the results are presented It is ideal for reviewing information architecture, benchmarking against competitor sites and gaining broad feedback.


Specialist Testing

Specialist Testing uses the skills and expertise of our usability professionals who are experienced in evaluating interfaces.

Following recognised usability and design principles, our instinct and intuitiveness, we provide clients with a focused analysis of what is right and wrong with the design of an interface.

In conducting expert reviews we note issues such as:

    •    What problems, if any, might users encounter with the interface?
    •    What concepts and skills must the user have to understand and interact with the interface? 
         Are there ways in which the presentation and options might be simplified?
    •    Are there demands on the user's recall (both conceptual and short-term memory), which could be reduced?

A Specialist Testing will provide you with confidence that the interface meets best practice user-centred design principles.


Accessibility Check

An Accessibility Check involves checking that your website is accessible to all users, regardless of physical, sensory and cognitive disabilities.

To measure the accessibility of your website we check its conformance against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). These guidelines, published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), are universally recognised as a de facto standard for Web Accessibility. We can evaluate your website against the old (WCAG 1.0) or the most recent (WCAG 2.0) version of the guidelines, and against any level of conformance (Level A, Level AA, Level AAA).

We deliver a report which describes in detail, all issues observed on your website and recommendations on how you can overcome them.


Application Community modelling

Application Community Modelling provides insight into the day to day behaviour of your Application visitors.
CresTech works closely with clients to ensure our work delivers maximum Return on Investment (ROI) on every project.

To successfully achieve this, Application offers Application Community Modelling.  The process includes the following key stages: