User Experience Strategy & Design
We are a user experience design firm based in Bangalore, India. We design applications and websites that can make your user happy and your business successful.
Our designs are characterised by extreme usability, arresting aesthetics and powerful functionality. They are not just seductive but addictive too.
We can turn your ideas into profitable businesses using a unique approach to User Experience Design involving thorough user & market research, incisive web strategy, agile design methodologies, and evolutionary improvements.
With over 200 projects (and counting) behind us, we are well poised to wow your users by engineering and designing pleasurable user experience for applications across devices and platforms.
We have delivered around 250 projects over the past 4 years. Do contact us if you would like to see more of our work
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We have had the pleasure of working with UXD from the time we first started MobStac. As a startup company focussed on a global market, we needed a website that emanated elegance and a focus on great user experience, and UXD delivered precisely that...
CTO, Mobstac.com
I work with UX Design Labs on many important and mission-critical projects - from print design to e-commerce websites. I am very impressed by their design skills, and the breadth and depth of their service portfolio. I really appreciate the level of detail, business acumen, professionalism, and quality that goes into every project I outsource to UXD... Source Seating, USA
If you need to create an experience behind stunning designs, UXD knows how Founder SoSasta.com
The team at UX Design Labs surpassed all our expectations with the final outcome of our engagement. They were able to deliver quality work in a short period of time, and their creativity, expertise and design quality is something we have not seen in any other design company so far. Two thumbs way up! Pennyful.com
Harness is an education start-up developing some revolutionary and patented apps for education. We needed a thought partner to develop a snazzy user interface, a good user experience is no more a delighter. It is a must-have.I had interacted with few user experience firms in Europe and scouted for a reliable firm in India. And I found UX Design Labs. I was impressed with their website and they seemed to understand the difference between graphics design and user experience design. We signed a contract within a week and marched on.
The UXD team follows a very sensible process for interaction design. They start with wire frames in a simple software like Excel. The first deliverable of the wire frame itself lends a lot of clarity to the app and separates different functions of your app in a logical fashion. Before any draft wire frame, the UXD team does a lot of research on prevailing apps and their knowledge of apps across devices and platforms is impressive.
The team is also open to scope changes which often happens during product design stage. They also have a great graphics team that designs pretty cool visual interfaces (they give you a few basic visual concepts to choose from, all of them are usually of high quality).
Overall, they live by their promise that their team is cross-functional. They are also quite affordable for start-ups. Overall, I would strongly recommend Shim and their team for any novel user interaction design project.
Founder and CEO
Harness Handitouch Private Limited
It has been a pleasure working with UX Design Lab; they showed the capability and creative mind to express ideas exactly as we had wanted, and turn out something that delighted our customers and us alike in terms of elegance of design and usability. People @ UXD took responsibility to meet our deadlines. craftsforsarees.com
UX Design Labs work has been the driving factor in the success of the i-Nurture website, with on-time deliverables and excellent support in the areas of website design and development. We confidently recommend them as experts in their field.. CEO, iNuture
We needed a branding and communication plan for our suite of service offering.... one which would provide a unified theme as well as be in line with our business strategy. UXD responded very well to the challenge and helped us in not just with the strategy formulation but also with all communication needed to achieve this... CEO, Paladion
UXD was able to take our business plan for setting up an Art Portal and weave a powerful web strategy right from branding, website and user interface design right thru to delivery of website... Founder, Kalaa Artspace
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 Software Applications across devicesWe design applications that can make your user happy and your business successful. We provide usability engineering and interface design services that help organizations ensure that their products and applications work well in the hands of users, customers and clients. |
 E-commerce Sites & Online Business portals
Our approach and processes help entrepreneurs bring innovative ideas to the market within a predictable time span and result. We work with you not just to develop the interface and look-and-feel of your product, but also to ensure that your product succeeds in meeting specified business and marketing objectives.
Working with us can significantly reduce the time necessary to get your product right. Instead of developing blind and iterating over and over, our approach helps companies deliver exactly what users actually want, more efficiently. |
 Corporate & Brand Websites
UXD is a bit different from your standard web design shop or development company. We design user experiences for your online presence which is memorable and has a positive impact on your brand.
We believe that user experience design is not about designing pretty websites. It's about making it work for you. We design websites that creates lasting impressions, improve brand recall, forge an emotional connect, build credibility and trust, generate leads and sell your products. At UXD, the folks working on your website are from the advertising and communication background, and understand that this is a communication and brand building exercise and not just a website design project. |
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Process for E-commerce website design
Whether you are moving online, or just leveraging the online channel or hit upon the next big online idea, chances are that you will need professional help. When your website becomes your business... we can help you design it like one.
At UXD, we have been successfully forging memorable relationships between the brand and the individual. Our design approach and processes seek to thrill shoppers with a superior experience, and make it incredibly easy and enjoyable to shop online.
We can help you bring innovative ideas to the market within a predictable time span and result. We work with you not just to develop the interface and look-and-feel of your e-commerce website, but also to ensure that your site succeeds in meeting specified business, marketing and conversion objectives.
Identify
Chances are that, you are reading this because you have identified an opportunity in the market and have got that big idea - product/ portal/ mobile app --- whatever. Else you have launched it and felt that you would rather use your competitors product ;) Either way, for an enterprise or an entrepreneur, the fist step is to identify the opportunity and believe in the big idea.
So Step 1 is about you - your idea, your understanding of the need, your hunch that it will work. We can be around in case in case you need someone to validate your assumptions, evaluate the opportunity, do a SWOT or discuss a go-to-market strategy.
Deliverables
There are no defined activities or deliverables in the stage except for a few brainstorming sessions if you pay for the beers.
Ideate
Identifying the opportunity and coming up with a killer idea are two different things. More often, it is not one big idea but a eclectic mix of many little ideas packaged into a product/ service offering.
If you have identified an opportunity, chances are that 20 others are already working on it. Step 2 is about understanding the need with greater depth through research and thinking up usable ideas which the 20 others have not thought of.
Deliverables
We can help you by wearing our green hat or by playing the devils advocate. This would help you concretize the idea with more clarity and come up with new twists which could offer greater value to your users. The outcome is usually a concept note/ business case doc.
Strategize
Behind many good ideas that fail is someone who was in a big hurry to take it to market. Someone said - fail fast - and most of them do just that.
There is much to think through and we can chip in. We can help you concretize the idea... envision the product... define value propositions...document the go-to-market strategy... also help you with more serious stuff like segmenting, targeting, positioning and differentiating...
Deliverables
A strategy doc in which you can add anything - product strategy, go-to-market strategy, on-boarding, marketing, branding, communication strategy .. and more.
Analyze
Our solution is only as good as our understanding. Analysis answers questions pertaining to the business landscape, personas, scenarios, functional & user requirements - But most importantly we try and understand who your users are and what they want... what motivates them and what makes them happy.
We also audit your existing applications for usability and UX deficits or to look for new ideas to enhance the existing user experience.
Dependencies
User Requirement Document / User stories. If you do not have them, then we would need a lot of face time for analysis. If you do not know what your users want, then we would like to start with user research.
Deliverables
The outcome of this stage is a good understanding of your users, their needs, wants, desires, use cases, user stories etc documented in formats we understand for internal consumption.
Engineer
Once we feel we have understood enough and have internalized what we have understood, we pick up the papers and pencils. We are yet to find a prototyping tool that beats this.
We think, discuss, argue, scribble, sketch, erase, sketch again ... this goes on till we feel that we have a grip on the key interactions and work flows. We then go on to make Lo-FI wireframes and then interactive hi-fidelity prototypes which can help you and the users get involved in the engineering process. This way we add more detail iteratively and ensure that we have the users on our side.
Dependency
User Requirement document/ use case document
Deliverables
Lo-Fi wire frames and then Hi-Fi interactive Wire frames.
Design
Well of course form follows function. But form MUST follow function else the best engineered interactions can look all too shabby and unusable and the users would be less inclined to use it.
So, once the user interaction has been captured in the wire frames, we begin the visual experience design. This phase brings together communication design, visualization, messaging, instruction, graphic design, typography, iconography and other graphic components to build a visual language that would enhance the experience engineered during the previous phase.
Dependencies
Hi-Fidelity Wire frames with documentation
Deliverables
The outcome in this stage fully finished visual/ GUI designs and the relevant style sheets
Develop
This has two parts - the front end and the back end integration. With increasing complexity of platforms, devices and interoperability, we found the need for specialists for quality deliverables. So while we can deliver a good front end code, we outsource the back end development. But we take the monkey off your back by managing the project and hand holding the development team to ensure that the deliverables match everyones expectations
Dependencies
Hi-Fi wire frames with documentation along with visual designs in photoshop files
Deliverables
The source code
Layer 1- Understand
Building a profitable business application requires clear vision and a user experience which is clearly in sync with its vision. Our solution is only as good as our understanding of this vision. In this phase we get the birds eye view of the overall context and get answers to questions pertaining to the business, product, users, objectives, technology etc. We spend some time to...
- Understand your business
- Understand your objectives
- Understand the application/ product/ idea
- Understand the opportunity
- How are we unique? What value do we offer?
- Analyze the business landscape
- Study competition, competitors products
- Personas, scenarios, activities
- Features, functionalities, workflows
- Existing user feedback
- Understand use cases, Create user stories
- USPs, Differentiations
- Technology platform, possibilities, limitations
- How much time do we have?
Layer 2- Analysis
Once we understand, we know what to analyze. The previous phase also helps us with the estimations, approach and proposal. Once that is out of the way we get down to more serious business. Analysis is a more formal phase and a business analyst/ consultant is assigned to the project whose main task is to: -
- Analyze the existing application and functional requirements based on client inputs. If required, conduct a detailed Heuristic Evaluation/ Usability Audit
- Brain storm and validate the baseline application functionalities on a granular level which is necessary for the application to compete in the market.
- Define new features and functionalities that differentiate the application from competitors. Understand new features and functionalities being added.
- Get answers to questions using deep analysis. Is there a big idea or are there many smaller ones? Can we innovate? How can we make the interaction easier? Do we need all these screens? What innovative methods can be used? What unique features can we add that's not out there? How can we exploit technology?
Layer 3- User Research
As the users increasingly demand more sophisticated features with extreme ease of use, putting them at center stage is what will make applications succeed. We try and understand who your users are and what they want...what motivates them and what makes them happy.
We conduct User Research on target user sets to understand the user personas, scenarios & contexts, analyze and gather the user needs and requirements, document what content and functionality is required to meet diverse user objectives, define user goals and user stories.
Research Methodologies (Formal Research is Outsourced)
Quantitative, qualitative & experimental ethnography Observations, questionnaires One to One interviews, Focus Groups Iterative usability evaluations A/B Testing, Cognitive Walk through, Heuristic Evaluations, Eye Tracking
Layer 4- Information Architecture
They say information that's hard to find will remain information that's hardly found. Information architecture is done with emphasis on easily finding or accessing data, information or any other kind of content, feature or functionality and thereby enhancing users ability to easily search, browse, discover,navigate through and find what he/ she wants to to complete tasks. The process helps in architecting the information in such a way that it is findable, user consumable and usable to work on. The effort is also to structure the application modules on a global level to conceive a usable navigation using modern navigational paradigms.
In this phase, the bulk of our efforts are spend on architecting the interfaces with emphasis on layout, structuring, zoning, navigation, page hierarchy, taxonomy and labelling.
Layer 5- Interaction Design
Here we deal with the 'action' that a user wants to take. While we structure content and access to functions in such a way as to facilitate swift accomplishment of goals and tasks in the previous phase, here we focus on the interaction with the data/ information/ functionality/ content using patterns, idioms to make the interaction as simple and usable as possible. It focuses on defining the workflow of the application based on user's mental model of the system.
Tasks include mapping of use cases to work flows, exploring usable patterns made possible by the latest in technology, functional architecture, controls, dynamic content etc. Interaction design calls for exercises like workflow analysis, usage scenarios, wireframed walkthroughs, iterative prototyping and so on
Layer 6- Visual Design
Bringing in a WOW factor through powerful arresting aesthetics, stunning visual appeal, high levels of finishing and detailing.
This phase brings together communication design, visualization, messaging, instruction, graphic design, typography, iconography and other graphic components to build a powerful visual GUI that would enhance the visual experience engineered during the previous phase while enhancing usability to the next level.
The deliverables in this phase include Photoshop files, vector icons for all devices and resolutions and style guides to help you extend the design to other screens
Layer 7- Development
This has two parts - the front end and the back end integration.
With increasing complexity of platforms, devices and interoperability, we found the need for specialists for quality deliverables. So while we can deliver a good front end code, we outsource the back end development. But we take the monkey off your back by managing the project and hand holding the development team to ensure that the deliverables match expectations
Application Design Process
Designing simple applications is not that simple. It takes twice the effort and time and the steps it requires are as twice as hard. We think it takes a lot to design a good experience. Our structured process brings together the effort of diverse skill sets into a collaborative environment which also includes you so that you stay closely involved
Our dynamic team based in Bangalore, India, includes experts in strategy, design, usability, communications, ethnographic and user research, information architecture, interaction design and information visualization, prototyping and programming. Our process not just converges our skills but it also helps us to innovate at different stages of the product life cycle so that the resultant product is one which your users fall in love with.
Click on the layers on the left for more.
We are a cross-disciplinary team of Interaction designers, Information architects, Communication & visual designers, GUI designers, Content specialists and Web strategists. We wow your users by engineering and designing pleasurable user experiences for applications across devices and platforms.
The team at UXD is small, tightly-knit and hard working lot. We are focused and deliver solutions beyond the capacity of other similarly sized operations. At UXD, clients have access to high-level UX expertise without the prohibitive rates and egos that are sometimes present in larger organizations.
By combining our strategic, creative and technology skills with our ability to innovate, we help convert opportunities into real solutions with our proven process of research, innovation, planning and execution.
We think Simple
Simple interfaces are easy on the eye, easy to understand and easy to use. It makes life easier and hence happier for the user. They will love you for it! But while all that is true, most 'simple' interfaces are too plain and lack luster. We make sure that our interfaces are as aesthetic as their functionalities. We believe that we need to balance form and function to create a unique user experience.
We understand... the Whole
A successful product or application is the result of detailed and thorough understanding of the fundamental business processes behind it - the organizational objectives, competition, marketing fundamentals, go to market strategy, entry barriers, USP, core value etc. We listen, analyze and understand the facts in their totality and the insights we gain is factored into our designs
We believe...in the User
The user is at the core of all that we do at UX Design Labs. We identify ourselves most with our ability to 'think user' and look at our work from an 'outside in' perspective. Our user research process is tuned to hear what they say and 'pick up' what they don't. We use these findings to drive our work and help us design products and websites which really matter to them.
