Improving usability is about finding ways to make your customers happier and more productive, and Paul provides several paths to making User-Centered Design (UCD) and usability a reality in your company.

Paul can structure the delivery of his services based on individual client needs. Clients with immediate and shorter-term needs can be accommodated with fee-based arrangements, while those with broader goals can put Paul's expertise on-call with availability guaranteed by retainer. Where clients reside outside of Vancouver, Paul has developed numerous techniques and assembled various collaborative tools that enable him to deliver his services with the same effectiveness that local clients enjoy.

• Usability Review for improving existing designs
• User Interface Design creating or re-making interfaces
• UCD Training & Process Development for improving usability techniques

Usability Review Top
For products on the drawing board or in development, a Usability Review identifies where interaction can be improved, and proposes a way forward for each issue found.

Paul’s Usability Review method combines expert usability inspection with task-based inquiry, conducted in-person or remotely. Instead of a template approach, each Review is tailored to be as comprehensive as needs demand. As such, the Review can act as a strategic blueprint for creating more usable products, or as a guide to improving existing designs, even during development.

Usability Reviews bring years of experience and understanding of industry standards, such as ISO 9241 (Ergonomics of Human-System Interaction), without the overhead of acquiring and learning how to apply that knowledge to real-world development problems and timelines. Combining deep understanding of usability issues with actual interface design skills, Paul makes the most of both theory and practice to clear a path for improving usability in your product.

Read the Case Study: Usability Review.

User Interface Design Top
When creating or updating a user interface, having the talents of a seasoned designer with you is invaluable. Paul’s in-depth knowledge of User-Centered Design (UCD) techniques and experience in creating scores of interfaces for both big and small screens ensures that you’ll deliver software that truly meets your customer’s needs.

Paul's highly-iterative design process produces user interface storyboard mockups as a means to visualize how your product will be seen and experienced by its users. As an additional benefit, these same user interface mockups can be usability tested, which is a very cost effective way to identify potential user and task workflow issues before development begins.

Like his Usability Review services, UI Design can be conducted at a distance. By using specially designed interviews and methods, Paul ensures that stakeholders and the development team are kept in the loop, and that development from design can flow smoothly.

Read the Case Study: User Interface Design.

UCD Training & Process Development Top
There's no one-size-fits-all solution for bringing User-Centered Design (UCD) into your development process. It's just a fact that fitting UCD concepts, tools and practices to team's unique needs, while keeping them productive, is a complex job at the best of times. Through scores of projects and years of experience in leading workshops, seminars and classroom instruction, Paul has the knowledge and experience to identify and implement the right kinds and degrees of change, enabling even the busiest teams to start making more usable products.

Paul's approach combines seminars, coaching and mentoring, design reviews, and access to his project collaboration tools. As he strives to provide only what a team needs, Paul can provide one or more stand-alone seminars that gets things moving in the right direction. When needed, that seminar is followed with the full complement of methods and tools that help your group make productive process changes. Even after direct engagement with a team has ended, Paul continues to build and share his evolving Usability & UCD Links collection and recommended list of Books on this site. By doing so, UCD Training & Process Development clients can continue to learn and adopt new ideas on an ongoing basis.

However much involvement a team needs, the result is that Paul helps UCD process development productive and rewarding, leaving teams better-equipped to go forward to build effective and usable interfaces on their own.

Read the Case Study: UCD Training & Process Development.