UX & Design

We start most major projects with a planning and scoping workshop/meeting with a number of key project stakeholders. The aim of this session will be to identify and document the requirements of all key stakeholders, including; 

• Key business objectives for the website
• User persona demographics and motivations
• Functional requirements       
• First draft navigation layout     
• Home page content requirements 
• Mapping key user journeys       
• Creating a comprehensive graphic design brief

Our approach ensures effective stakeholder engagement, fostering collaboration to shape successful project outcomes.

At the heart of our methodology lies a robust planning process and discovery workshops that set the foundation for success and enable our UX consultants and interface architects to gain a deep understanding of your requirements ahead of delivering wireframes and site maps.

The documentation that emerges from planning workshops provides an invaluable project overview. This detailed plan acts a means of managing the project with clarity and purpose, ensuring that it progresses smoothly and ultimately delivers in line with agreed milestones and deliverables.

Wireframing involves strategically designing website layouts and templates, a crucial step in logically organising content and navigation systems across various sections of the website. This process precedes the graphic design phase, ensuring a solid foundation.

Our in-house information architects employ a mobile-first approach to create clear and easily readable UX wireframes. Additionally, we offer interactive responsive prototypes that enable users to navigate through the site with clickable interactions and provide a genuine experience of site functionality. These interactive prototypes play a pivotal role in effective UX testing, enhancing the overall user interface design process.

At Mentor we have an advanced eye-tracking system to allow us to analyse user navigation. Our portable system allows our UX consultants to conduct user testing sessions either at your offices or ours.

Additionally, we provide a sourcing service to assemble a diverse group of users, representing various demographics, for participation in testing sessions. This approach offers numerous advantages, such as the swift identification of layout and navigation issues and validation of our layout design process.

Whilst resulting adjustments to wireframes arising from user experience testing can seem minor, small improvements in usability can result in substantial increases in conversion rate and conversions, underlining the importance of thorough user testing as part of the UX design process.

Following the finalisation of approved wireframes, our Senior Graphic Designers add colour and digital graphic design flair to bring the wireframes to life. Mentor boasts a diverse pool of graphic design resources, ensuring we match the right Designer to each project, aligning the design style with the brief.

Typically, several graphic design concepts for your website will be developed and presented to your team. Once a look and feel, along with the overall concept, is chosen, our Designers seamlessly extend the design across all page templates before transitioning to website development.

Our websites are designed for universal accessibility, aligning with the latest requirements. Content undergoes thorough testing using JAWS and Dragon screen readers to ensure that individuals who are blind or partially-sighted can fully access and enjoy the core content.

With extensive experience collaborating with organisations such as the NHS, National Deaf Children's Society, and Shaw Trust to deliver products for which accessibility was a key factor, Mentor's team is well versed in ensuring that websites adhere to and surpass digital accessibility guidelines.

At any stage of a project Mentor can obtain accessibility testing from within the community. We currently work with Bristol City Council Museums, who assist in facilitating usability testing. Additionally, we partner with Shaw Trust’s web accessibility team in Neath. This collaboration involves producing comprehensive accessibility reports based on the results derived from testing conducted by their in-house team of 15 disabled testers.