Today, technology becomes more and more advanced, also in the home technology area. Every day, consumers have to face an increasingly complex world with computer based communication, mobile phones, Internet, digital TV, and much more...

We make sure that what’s produced in a project is easy to use, effective and nice looking – as well as ensuring that have the right functions and features for the target consumer group.

Pleasant and easy-to-use graphical user interfaces has always been in our focus throughout the development process. It's our firm belief that any technical consumer product or service is more or less worthless without a good user interface that is designed especially for the target group.

Usability?

Usability is an approach to product development that incorporates direct user feedback throughout the development cycle in order to reduce costs and create products and tools that meet user needs. Two international standars define usability and user-centered design:

"[Usability refers to] the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of user." - ISO 9241-11

"Human-centered design is characterised by: the active involvement of users and a clear understanding of user and task requirements; an appropriate allocation of function between users and technology; the iteration of design solutions; multi-disciplinary design." - ISO 13407

• Increased productivity.
• Increased sales (and revenue)
• Decreased education and support costs.
• Decreased development time (and costs): Do not implement unnecessary functions, do it RIGHT from the beginning!
• Decreased maintenance costs.
• Satisfied customers: Good quality sales!
• Competitive benefit: Compete with a product that provides what users WANT to have, not what you THINK they would like!

Usability Consultancy at Zenterio

We provide educations and consultancy services within the usability fields, please contact a sales representative at Zenterio to discuss what we can offer.

Zenterio AB provides consultancy services that assist our clients to provide user-centered design of IT-technologies. Our experts has long experiences of PC applications, Interactive TV, Mobile Phone appliances and web design that require ease-of-use and efficiency as well as availability for users with special needs.

We have long local and international experiences of usability and design both as consultants and researchers. Our consultants have experience in usability, interaction and graphical design, analysis, procurement support, and educations. Zenterio offers a complete range services throughout the product development process; from analysis to delivery.

We have a pragmatic approach to usability methods. Too formal methods may get your product a decent but rather boring level, and may also be a stopper for more creative and talented designers who get annoyed by working under tight formal constraints and limitations. We adapt our methods to suit the reality!

Since we have been working in the usability business for many years, which means that we have an understanding for the value of returning the costs of usability investments (ROI)

Zenterio offers a number of packages to improve the quality of your systems and products.

With our packaged solutions you know what you get and what you pay for. After a quick review of the task, we offer all our packages on a fixed or man/hour- based price. In addition to that, we also create custom packages tailor made for your needs.

We have the skills and experience to help you with challenges in user centered design, usability evaluations, graphical design, requirement analysis and educations. To make it easier to talk about our services and to order them, we’ve bundled them in a handful of packages.

We currently offer packages in the following areas:

Usability Tests: We evaluate your products or services...

Zenterio offers test packages to enhance the quality of your systems and products. In all our test packages we deliver a written or oral report with the problems and flaws that we find, and we provide measure proposals for improvements.

A Quick Review... - Do you have the feeling that your product isn't really up to standard? - Does it seem like your users surf away from your web site to your competitors or just shop less because it's so cumbersome? Our usability specialists do a quick but well though through review of your product to a low and fixed price.

Detailed Review With a starting point in e.g. check lists and models of end-users' profiles, our experts use well known and effective methods, such as "Cognitive Walkthroughs" to accomplish a thorough evaluation of your products.

User Study - Would you like to know how well your products work and what the users really think? We evaluate your product together with the end users. The evaluation doesn't need to be expensive; usually you just need 5-10 users to find most usability flaws. The evaluations are conducted either on the field or in our own test-lab.

Analyses: The important homework before you start developing...

- Do you need support to specify the requirements for an IT-product?
- Are not you sure whether your product corresponds to the users' requirements?
- Do you want to analyse the functions for the next version of your product?
- Do you want to know the characteristics of the market?

Analysis We provide methods to analyse requirements, e.g. interviews and end-user analysis. During the analysis phase we create a map of the users, the tasks, goals, and the current technical conditions (both possibilities and limitations). We document and communicate the results in a customised and appropriate way, e.g. by sketches, detailed documents, or as a simple PowerPoint presentation.

Design: We design your products or services...

In the design packages, our experts create new interactive products.

Graphical Design - Do you feel that the icons are old and faulty, or do you need more of them? - Is the look of your website not really up to standards any more? We provide experienced graphical designers that consider the entire solution, from idea to a complete graphic design.

Interaction Design - Do you want to design or change your product? You get help from our interaction designers who provide proposals about how the product should be designed or changed to be more effective and easier to use. We help your development department with design support, e.g. as an active part of the development project or as support unit

Prototypes - Do you want to develop a prototype to your new product idea or service, e.g. for test and marketing purposes? Our designers can quickly and effectively build interactive prototypes and models in everything from HTML and Flash, to paper and plastic.

Internationalisation - Are you about to bring your product to a profitable international market? - Do you need help to translate the product (menus, user's instructions, etc.) to other languages? - Is there a need to know if your product needs to be redesigned or adapted for foreign cultures? We provide both experience (Several of our employees have a multi-cultural background) and methods (e.g. iTrans) to help you with the complete internationalisation launch process of your product!

UserLane

Note: Zenterio's usability branch was handled and marketed under it's own brand and separate daughter company named UserLane up until the end of 2006. As of 2007, All UserLane activities and competences are merged into the main company.