UX Research & Design
Design Better ProductsHow do you know what is or isn’t working?
Can people figure out how to use your product?
How do you create a better user experience?
The user experience (UX) can make or break your business. Seamlesss UX is essential to driving customer acquisition, feature utilization, and retention.
We leverage evaluative methods to identify what is and isn’t working with your product, delivering detailed reports and recommendations. We can also benchmark your products experience against ISO/IEC regulations for products that must meet federal or safety standards before being released into the market.
Our UX and content design experts then help create efficient, effective, and satisfying product experiences that users can understand and adopt easily. We can work with your team or use our designers to ensure you are delivering exceptional experiences.
Here is How We Work With You
UX Audit
A UX audit is an expert review of a product by two design professionals with a robust knowledge of design heuristics and a keen eye.
Our experts go through the critical user paths and identify UX errors that appear in these flows. We use a variety of methods, tools, and metrics to analyze where a product is going wrong (or right). Each error is assigned to the appropriate category, receives a priority, and its description is supplemented with illustrations and recommendations for correcting it.
After this stage, you will know what errors occur on the tested paths, which errors require immediate repair, and recommendations for how they can be made.
Evaluative Research (UXR)
If you want to build a product right, or have any questions why your product is not performing as well as you expect, then evaluative research is the answer.
We partner with you to build products and services that are effective, efficient, and satisfying by applying the principles of human-centered design. Our experts explore, test, and help improve the user experience from concept through release, and beyond.
Evaluative research saves you time and money by finding and fixing flaws early and keeping your team connected to the needs and desires of your end users.
Our experts design careful experiments to observe users as they complete real-life tasks using your product or service. These tests answer questions such as:
- What’s the optimal way to organize information for your users?
- Are proposed design solutions usable?
- Are my customers satisfied with their product experience?
- How can the user experience be improved?
Product Strategy
We help you create a product strategy and roadmap that ensures you are meeting user needs as well as organizational goals. This often begins with a series of strategic workshops were the product team digests research findings and decides what to build and when. We also set milestones and KPIs, aligning efforts towards a common goal.
Our engagement with product leadership can take on different forms, from an advisory role to fractional product management. Our goal is to keep the design and development teams in sync and in tune with the requirements derived from research, while executing any additional research needed to inform strategic decisions.
UX Design: User Flows
We design experiences that engage and satisfy users. Our experts apply design psychology and prototyping skills to connect with human needs and desires, making your product or service experience seamless and intuitive.
This begins by defining user need stories and the functional scope of the product. We then create user flows — diagrams that display the path a user takes when using a product to meet their goals. They show the user’s movement through the product, mapping out every step the user takes – from entry point through to the final interaction.
At Rill Insights we use flow sketching and mapping to look at the whole picture, before creating prototypes or interface design. When working with products that are already developed, flow diagrams allows us to understand any friction points customers may be facing. They help to build the product backlog and set priorities for the development stage.
UX/UI Design: Prototyping
Prototyping is the iterative cycle of thinking, making, and observing so you can get fast feedback on design ideas and rapidly adapt the product.
Our experts build on user flows to create Low-fidelity (lo-fi) mockups – simple and low-tech concepts of the product in the form of testable artifacts that you can then use to collect and analyze feedback in the early stages.
Lo-fidelity prototypes help focus on the most important aspects of the product – function and logic – instead of thinking about visuals and interactions. They allow for quick, real time iterations and are accessible – there is no need for a special software or technical skills. All these features make them a perfect tool for participatory UX workshops and brainstorming sessions.
Once the core functionality is laid out, we partner with your design team or use one of our designers to raise the fidelity to look and feel like the final product. We then test these interactive prototypes to ensure that the product meets user needs and has a smooth, intuitive user experience. This is the final stage before handing the product off to the development team.
UX Content Design
Great content improves sales, adoption, and ease of use. We can help you craft user-friendly content and clear messaging that lands with the target audience, from UX writing to onboarding content and multichannel delivery workflows.
For existing products, we begin with a site-wide content audit and identify areas for improvement. With new products, we work with you to determine what content is required and how to deliver it.
Our experts will then create a strategy and design content that align to user and business needs. We’ll help you develop content standards and guidelines, facilitate the strategy with your team, and implement governance that maintains brand and voice consistency.
Our services ensure that:
- Users find and understand the content they need when they visit your site.
- Your content reflects your organizational values across all touch points.
- You have a workflow to create and maintain content over time.
Ready to begin?Let's discuss your project.
WHAT WE DO
Our Methods
Heuristic Review
An expert assessment of how your product compares against usability guidelines (best practices).
Usability Testing
Testing products with real users to find usability flaws and areas for improvement.
Card Sort
Reveals people’s natural mental models for categorization to help develop information architecture.
Mood Boards
Building a visual brand aesthetic to inform the design system.
Wireframing
Creating low-fidelity screens to develop the functional UX that helps users meet their goals.
UX/UI Design
Creating functional and visual designs for digital products and websites.
Hi-Fidelity Prototypes
Create mockups of a product that look and feel like the real thing to test with users.
Design Validation
Testing designs with potential users for percieved value and other feedback.
Storyboards
Creating graphic illustrations of a problem and potential solution(s) to gather feedback on ideas.
User Onboarding
Creating messaging sequences to familiarize new users to a product and increase retention.
UX Writing
Crafting all written copy within a product to be end-user friendly.
A/B Testing
Experimenting between versions of messaging or interactions to find which performs best.
Bryan and Lisa provided design expertise to create a tailored experience for caregivers. In particular, they provided connections to build our needed team, subject matter expertise, and helped bring our ideas to life with warm and personal designs. Their insights helped identify how our product is differentiated from the competition and will make a difference during our user tests and market launch. The project was well organized and team communication on the project plan enabled us to achieve our project goals.
Matthew Zuraw, Co-Founder, CareVirtue
FAQ
What will we receive from a UX audit or usability testing?
The output of a UX audit is a detailed report with research-backed suggestions for improving your product. These suggestions are actionable insights and practical recommendations with examples on what exactly should be changed and how.
What deliverables will I receive after the product design process?
You’ll receive wireframes, prototypes, and a full design handoff package, ready for development.
Can product design help improve an existing product?
Yes, we can redesign and enhance existing products to improve user experience and functionality.