Make your users successful

With the ever-increasing volume and complexity of information, it’s critically important that your users be able to find what they need quickly and easily. As experts in search user experience design, we are committed to creating search and browse interfaces that are intuitive and effective. Our team of information architects and designers provide strategic guidance and expertise to ensure that your search interfaces deliver effective results and a positive user experience.

Understand the different types of user behavior involved in searching

Your users have their ways of looking for things and you are committed to ensuring that they are successful in finding what they need. We have a strong foundation in cognitive psychology and human-computer interaction, using techniques that surface the mental models in user information seeking and use. Our approach doesn't just focus on the "one-and-done" targeted search result user -- we understand the design of exploratory search, supporting multi-session researchers. We are comfortable advising on and designing for a wide range of search approaches and technologies to best connect users with the information people seek, in their context.

Design easy-to-use search interfaces

You have an incredible amount of information, but you don’t want it to overwhelm your users. We have provided search user interface design for diverse projects enhancing cultural collections, learning management systems, academic journals, health information systems, content recommendation systems, and complex decision-making applications. Our highly experienced designers simplify and streamline search experiences, while returning rich and useful results. And search is not just centered on the results page. We leverage search capabilities in many parts of an application to deliver relevant content and navigate subject relationships, in context, proactively.

Take advantage of categorization/taxonomy and standards-based metadata

You want your data to be smart. We have a strong understanding of the role of standards-compliant data and emerging models, and can consider where they can be effectively applied to support user interaction with search, browse, navigation structures, recommendations, related linking, and search tuning and refinement. We have pioneered techniques for proactive search that supports users dynamically in applications.

Make the most of your content

You have worked hard to create a significant amount of valuable content and make it available to your key audiences. We love large content challenges and intensive knowledge work. Many of our projects focus on design for large content and data repositories, often used by specialist researchers and analysts. We continue to hone techniques for understanding how they think, how they search for information, and what they need to be successful.