The process

Fuzzier than a formula but easier to understand

Every project, client, budget and solution is different. Our tested, trusted approach guides us through each engagement. It’s fuzzier than a formula, and it works everytime.

Discovery

We dialog with your customers and stakeholders to agree on what works and what’s broken with today’s solution to your problem. Then, our team uses ethnographic techniques, sketching, and co-creation exercises to generate a matrix of product offerings and media channels (web, mobile, physical, etc.) for exploration as potential products.

Product roadmap
A roadmap of potential uses and market opportunities for your product.
Participatory design
Design opinions and ideas gathered from people who actually use the site.
Task analysis
An up-close look at how people do a set of tasks today—what they need to accomplish and how they go about it.
Field studies
Direct, professional observation of users in their environment to discover their unmet and unexpected needs.
Competitive analysis
Gain insight into your top competitors’ successes and failures, and ideas for carving your own niche in the marketplace.
User personas
Visual tools for sharing an understanding of your users, their motivations, goals and aspirations with the design team.
Content strategy
A new strategy for organizing, presenting, and managing their content.
Design strategy
New thinking on making your product better serve your audience and your bottom line.
Interface evaluation
An in-depth evaluation of your current product’s interface—what works, what doesn’t, and what you can do to fix it.

Interface design

Here’s where we really start getting our hands dirty. Using our interaction design expertise, we create prototypes to test solutions to the problems identified earlier. Prototypes take many forms, from paper prototypes to get rapid feedback in the field to specifications to hand off to a development team, from a high fidelity visual and functional prototype that looks like the real thing to a demo video of your application to show your vision to the board of directors. Whatever your need, Fuzzy Math can deliver a prototype that engages your team’s interest and moves the project ahead successfully.

Storyboarding
Play-by-play explanations of how people will use the new website.
Rapid prototyping
Prototyping is the most effective method for testing and refining designs, allowing users to experience a product before it is built.
Interaction design & Information architecture
A detailed plan for reorganizing, re-envisioning, and redeveloping the site with a fresh approach and full details on each page’s features, content, and interaction.
Presentation-layer development
We roll our sleeves up to create launch-ready code files in Flash, XHTML, CSS, and Javascript.
Findability services
Including accessible and search-engine optimization tips for better search rankings and 508a compliance.
Graphic design
We’re not an advertising agency, but we do know a picture is worth 1,000 words. As part of a full life-cycle engagement we’re more than happy to spruce up your site or application’s brand, appearance, iconography, photography and more.

Validation

We don’t launch and leave. We pride ourselves on seeing the results of our recommendations through to create meaningful value for you. We use log analysis, data mining, and user testing to ensure your product is behaving as expected, or better.

Participatory design
Design opinions and ideas gathered from people who actually use the site.
Usability testing
User testing on key tasks, to provide real-world insight into ways people use the site.
Log analysis and data mining
Did conversions go up? Did we get more registrations? We do the analytics to see how well existing or new solutions are taking care of your business.
User testing guides and findings reports
Preparation for testing real users and a detailed report of what was discovered during testing.