Making a purchasing choice in our space can be difficult - even if you are a user-centered design professional. If you're moving beyond the familiar with such a decision, the three points below might help Catalyst inform your decision in general, regardless of whether you engage us or not.

1. WHY USER CENTERED DESIGN MATTERS TO YOUR BUSINESS

If an interface creates uncertainty for a customer about whether or not to buy your product or service, or limits an employee's ability to reduce that uncertainty, customers will likely go somewhere else. And thanks to the Web and the trend towards customer empowerment, it's easier than ever for people to walk away. The bottom line is that, now, these interfaces are as much a part of your product and service offerings as the products and services themselves. User-centered interface design and testing can help ensure that key audiences are getting as much as possible of what they expect and need from you on their own.

2. UNDERSTANDING USER CENTERED DESIGN VENDORS

Traditionally, you'll find three types of consultants who offer some type of user-centered design services. There are "pure" designers, who are almost academic in their exactitude and insistence on specific processes and results. There are agencies that include usability in a range of interactive capabilities - from HTML coding, to software development, to email marketing campaigns, to online advertising, to graphic design. Then there are new-wave firms that view every aspect of a business through a customer lens, and adjust every type of customer touchpoint accordingly, from print-ad campaigns to call-center scripts. These, potentially, are all valuable approaches - but from Catalyst's point of view, they ask you to make some odd choices. Do you care more about the interface? Or interactive integration? Or the customer? We think you care about your business. You shouldn't have to wrestle with configuring your needs in our terms. At Catalyst, that's our job.

3. GETTING MORE VALUE FROM USER CENTERED DESIGN

Whatever a consultant's methodology, it's been well documented that user-centered design can drastically improve an interface like a website. And that usability testing is a cost-effective way to diagnose and/or validate design decisions. Less well understood - but increasingly valuable - is Catalyst's expertise in ensuring that an entire organization, not just the webmasters, benefits from improving an interface. If you invest in changing your website for the better, stakeholders and customers should know how and why the improvement works. The days when a site redesign is taken for granted or pursued for purely aesthetic reasons are over. Most user interface designers leave clients to deal with this issue on your own.

Catalyst, however, can continue the consulting process to help other parts of your organization understand how improved usability makes their own tasks easier. We're experienced at working with visual designers to ensure an aesthetic blend of navigation and visual impact. We will help marketers understand how to factor improved usability into affiliate or advertising relationships - or aid PR professionals in crafting new user-centered messages for beat reporters, industry analysts and others. Catalyst, in short, extends the operational benefits of user-centered design in whatever ways you find most valuable. We aren't just designers. We're practitioners of the business of user-centered research and design.