UX/UI – Nimbus Research Centre

Companies that value and integrate design effectively within their organization have greater innovation potential. By raising the awareness of design and applying best practices of design methodologies within their organization, design has a significant impact for companies, enabling them to deliver well-designed products and services for their customers. The Nimbus Centre have diverse expertise complimented with first class facilities in delivering user experience research and design services. Nimbus approach innovation though human centred design approaches such as design thinking, where many SMEs and European Research programmes have benefited, across a broad range of disciplines such as manufacturing, healthcare, education, e-agricultural, environmental etc…

The application of Design Thinking has been a driving factor towards growing our capacity to deliver innovative solutions, which are primarily concentrated on solving problems for people, whilst being technically feasible and commercially viable. Significant contributions from Design Thinking workshops have generated creative and well-defined solutions for new or existing products and services.

“Our User Experience Research and Design Process has been a driving factor towards growing our capacity to deliver innovative solutions which are primarily concentrated on solving problems for people, whilst being technically feasible and commercially viable.”

UX Research & Design Services

Nimbus provide a wide range of user experience research and design services, where richer creativity and finer precision can be infiltrated into our clients new or existing products or service solutions, therefore given them a competitive advantage.

Nimbus Innovation Lab & Process

The Nimbus Innovation Lab is the space where we collaborate with each other and our clients. It is where we gather together to understand, share, evaluate, ideate, prototype and test with the shared endeavor to drive our innovation capacity. The characteristics of the innovation lab (layout, textures, colours, furniture etc…) were considered carefully in relation to its functionality to support collaborative research, ideation, prototyping and testing activities. The innovation lab consists of first-class facilities and equipment (Design Thinking Furniture, Storage Units, Interactive Whiteboards) that enable us to co-innovate effectively together with our clients and stakeholders for specific tasks (requirements gathering, user research, brainstorming, analysis, ideation, prototyping, testing). Our innovation lab is setup to be adaptable to support a wide range of different research and design activities.

Design Thinking consists of stages, which are known as Empathy, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Testing. Design Thinking consists of various research and design tools, which may be undertaken during each stage of the Design Thinking process.

Discover

Design Thinking starts with understanding what humans need, what make life easier, more enjoyable. What makes technology usable and effective? This resolves around the need to understand the problem from the perspective of the people whom with use the product or service. It Is essentially to comprehend the problem and what is needed. Through empathy we gather peoples needs which generate meaningful insights, which are carefully considered and factored for during the innovation process. Through engaging with our potential customers, we listen, talk, observe in essence to understand about how they think and feel. Through Design Thinking we aim to concentrate more on the emotional connection that humans need though understanding their problems.
Methods: Stakeholder & User Interviews, Observational Studies, Re-enactment, Empathy Maps, Business Model Canvas, Secondary Research.

Define

After completing the empathy phase, we then analyse and interpret the information collected. We review customer’s feedback in essence to define the core problems we wish to address. We look towards where there are consistent patterns pertinent in the data, common themes. We reframe the problem and create a plan in how to address the plan and create a solution. We evaluate peoples needs against what is technically and commercially feasible.

Methods: Data Sorting, Analysis & Summation, Problem Statement Definition, Structured Research Insights & Findings

Design

This is the creative phase where we explore potential solutions or paths towards solving the problem. This is where we innovate. During the ideation phase we brainstorm and share ideas internally and with project stakeholders. We use effective methods and simple tools to articulate ideas such as describing our target users through personas, writing user stories, sketching, storyboarding and journey mapping.

Methods: Brainstorming, User Stories, Personas, Sketching, Storyboards, Customer Journey Mapping. Concept Visioning with Video & Animation

Develop

Prototypes speed up the cycle of innovation. If a picture is worth a 1000 words, then a prototype is worth a 1000 pictures. A physical or tangible solution is then created. We then translate ideas into developed prototypes. We often create many types of prototypes. These maybe non-functional paper mockups representing user interfaces, or cardboard version of the platform. These maybe crude, however they are cheap and a quick way of testing concepts. We then progress to medium fidelity, which may emulate some of the levels of functionality, through to developing fully functional prototypes closer to a product. Through prototyping we seek consistent feedback with an objective towards continuous refinement.

Methods: Paper Prototyping, Wireframes, User Interface Mockups. Click-through Prototypes, High-fidelity Prototypes with advanced interactivity.

Client Testimonials

Liam Fitzgerald, Marine Incubation Manager at University College Cork

"Kevin has worked with me on both Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the New Frontiers programme. New Frontiers is the National Entrepreneur Development programme funded by Enterprise Ireland. Kevin is passionate about Design and Design Thinking. He has expertly communicated the power of Design Thinking to New Frontiers participants through highly interactive, impactful and enjoyable workshop sessions. His knowledge and experience in this specialist area is very impressive.

Dr. Darren McDonnell, Director at SCRI-IS Technologies

"I worked closely with Kevin during the initial design phases of our asset management software platform, and I found him to be exceptional in truly capturing what our and our clients needs really were. Kevin guided us through the initial stages of concept design seamlessly, and produced a very comprehensive report on our software development roadmap in a very timely manner. Kevin provided a first class service and I fully recommend his services without hesitation."