Upon commencement, we begin with a kick off meeting to review the entire service offering, brainstorm additional features and functionality, determine priorities based on competitive advantage and set up expectations on the design, development and deployment of the service. The outcome is a Creative Brief, a Technical Brief, Online management tools or a dedicated FTP client for file transfer and production methodologies to make the process as efficient and effective as possible.

Once we have consensus on the Phase I milestones, we will begin developing the information architecture with a textual flowchart and then robust wire frames to ensure we are accommodating for all the appropriate content, features and functionality.  The goal is to ensure the user can access content and services as easy and intuitive as possible while providing a rich, immersive experience.

We begin the Conceptual Development process by reviewing and analyzing any current identity and then develop 2 - 3 unique conceptual directions across the same key frames. Each of the designs will explore the navigational paradigm, information design and layout, aesthetic, iconography and overall concept. This will enable us to look high level and see what you respond to without getting down into the detail level of fleshing out all the appropriate navigation and/or screens.

Once we gain consensus on the most appropriate direction, we will make modifications as needed and present the final concepts. Once that is approved, we will further flesh out navigation and functionality during the subsequent phases of development.

During this phase, we will further flesh out the navigation and design across the remaining applications and services, including the high level templates, sub templates, message screens and/or OSDs, alerts and all other graphics that need to be created. During this phase, we will also develop a variety of mechanism for integrated advertising and promotion into the service and begin development of any animations and/or transitions. If iconography or other unique branded elements are integrated into the design, we will also design those elements during this Phase. In addition, all assets will be produced according to specification, any animations will be created and delivered and all final assets will be designed.

Depending on the complexity of the service, we may create a variety of use case scenarios to ensure the user experience is simple and easy to use based on real world scenarios. This document will include a screen shots of the actual user experience, along with the user case and black and white frames illustrating the architectural flow of the experience.

In order to assist the engineers, facilitate production and establish user interface guidelines, we will create  a style guide that outlines all typography, graphics for each main page, image sizes and color palettes as appropriate. We will typically provide this document once we have Approval on the overall key frames and then will leave space so that as the additional screens are designed, they can be incorporated into the document for reference.  

The other document we many times create is a User Experience Document that showcases each screen throughout the service and address how the navigational paradigm works, the functionality on each screen, unique transitional elements, highlight metaphor, remote control function, etc. This document will assist the overall team to ensure we understand how the entire service works and will be integral to programming on the platform.