Xperience This!

The definition of functional requirements for a website or a business application is a critical phase in the development process. Aligning those requirements with the needs of your target audience is a prerequisite to launching a tool that will be quickly adopted and meet business expectations for ROI.

Prototyping is an excellent technique that enables your development team to get valuable audience feedback and address issues pertaining to functional priorities and usability before they become costly downstream problems. Prototyping provides the additional benefit of allowing the team to share its vision and begin building a fan base among your audience members. These fans can become powerful allies in driving adoption of the completed tool.

Despite its benefits, prototyping and early stage audience testing can be perceived as slowing down the development process and creating unnecessary front-end costs. We believe that when done correctly, prototyping’s benefits far outweigh its costs. Here are a few things we’ve learned along the way to help ensure the process is efficient and effective. More »

Surveys show that 2 out of every 3 IT projects fail. Many are even cancelled before completion. Common reasons projects fail range from budget overruns to failure to deliver ROI to no change control system. The list can go on and on….  According to a PMI Survey, one of the top 3 reasons for project failure is not meeting the audience needs. A key factor to avoid this is by simply keeping your audience engaged throughout the “entire” process. Letting your audience have a voice throughout the project lifecycle (Audience Centered Design) while implementing functionality in small dosages (Agile Development Cycle) is a major key to developing a successful website and will substantially decrease your chances of project failure or rework later on.
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