Digital Experience and Product Engineering
UX Research and Interface Design
User research and interface design for complex products: moderated testing, accessibility to WCAG 2.2 AA, interaction design and production-ready UI specifications.
Overview
Good interfaces come from understanding people, not from following trends. Users of complex products bring deep domain knowledge, real time pressure and habits shaped by the tools they already use. Design that ignores that context produces screens that look polished but slow people down.
We pair UX research with interface design throughout a project. Moderated usability testing, task analysis and accessibility evaluation inform every iteration, and designs are specified with the states, edge cases and responsive behaviour engineers need to build them faithfully.
Business applications
- 01
Usability evaluation of existing products
Find where users struggle in a live product through moderated testing and heuristic review, producing a prioritised list of issues backed by evidence and paired with recommended fixes.
- 02
Accessibility audits and remediation
Evaluate products against WCAG 2.2 AA using automated tools, manual review and assistive technology testing, then design and verify remediations together with the engineering team.
- 03
Interface design for new features
Design workflows and screens for new capabilities, iterating from sketches to high-fidelity prototypes that are validated with representative users before engineering commits to an implementation.
- 04
Complex workflow simplification
Redesign dense, multi-step tasks such as approvals, configuration or data entry, reducing cognitive load while preserving the control and efficiency that expert users depend on.
Engineering approach
- 01
Plan research around decisions
Each study begins with the product decisions it should inform, and those decisions determine the participants, methods, tasks and level of rigor we choose.
- 02
Observe real tasks
Moderated sessions, contextual enquiry and task analysis reveal how people actually work, including the shortcuts, errors and workarounds that analytics alone cannot explain.
- 03
Design and iterate
Interaction concepts move from sketches to prototypes in short loops, with each round tested against the tasks and success criteria agreed during planning.
- 04
Verify accessibility
Designs are checked for contrast, focus order, target size, semantics and screen reader behaviour against WCAG 2.2 AA criteria before handoff, not after release.
- 05
Specify for engineering
Handoff covers component usage, interaction states, error and empty states, responsive rules and content guidance, reviewed jointly with engineers so questions are resolved early.
Technologies and platforms
Design and prototyping
- Figma
- FigJam
- ProtoPie
- Adobe Illustrator
Research platforms
- Lookback
- Maze
- UserTesting
- Dovetail
- Optimal Workshop
Accessibility testing
- axe DevTools
- WAVE
- NVDA
- JAWS
- VoiceOver
- Lighthouse
Standards and guidelines
- WCAG 2.2
- WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices
- Section 508
- EN 301 549
Technology names are trademarks of their respective owners and do not imply partnership or endorsement.
What you receive
- Research plan and participant screener
- Usability findings with severity ratings and supporting evidence
- Accessibility audit against WCAG 2.2 AA with remediation guidance
- High-fidelity interface designs and interactive prototypes
- Annotated engineering specifications covering states and edge cases
Questions leaders ask
How many participants do we need for usability testing?
For qualitative testing, small rounds with a handful of representative participants per user group typically surface the most significant issues, and repeated rounds teach more than one large study. Quantitative benchmarks need larger samples, which we size according to the confidence the decision requires.
Does designing for WCAG 2.2 AA limit visual design?
Very little in practice. Accessibility requirements mostly affect contrast, focus visibility, target sizes and how information is structured, and those changes tend to improve clarity for every user. A distinctive visual identity remains entirely achievable within the criteria.
Can you research with specialised or hard-to-reach users?
Yes, with planning. Clinicians, engineers, traders and field technicians have limited time, so we keep sessions short, meet them in their own context where possible, and often recruit through your customer or employee networks with appropriate consent.
Related work
Related solutions
Related industries
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