Pentalog Institute

Ergonomics and accessibility

According to a Jakob Nielsen study, the involvement of an ergonomics expert in an IT project can lead to the increase:

  • by more than 100% of sales / conversion rate,
  • by more than 150% of the traffic on a site,
  • by more than 160% of a user’s performance / productivity,
  • and by more than 200% of the use of specific functions.

Thanks to its ergonomics and accessibility offer, Pentalog Institute can support you in all the ergonomics redesigning stages for your site or application. Depending on the progress of your project (new project or site in production), our ergonomics experts put their expertise at your service in order to make your tool easy to use, accessible, intuitive and user-friendly. With a studied interface especially designed for them, your users will be able to find their way around the site easily because they will find the interface intuitive. They will save time and become more efficient; therefore, they will increase their productivity.

Our offer

Pentalog Institute’s ergonomics and accessibility offer is structured around 4 types of services:

Audit

The audit is the first stage of taking charge of your project by one of our experts in ergonomics. It enables us to make an assessment of the general aspects of the existing site or application and to highlight the weaknesses and the areas which need improvement. Pentalog Institute offers two types of audits:

  • Diagnostic audits

During the diagnostic audit, one of our experts in ergonomics will make an assessment of the general situation regarding the existing application or based on the graphic design mock-up for an on-going project. The expert will carry out an analysis of the elements made available to him, he will bring forward a list of strengths and weaknesses and, during the feedback meeting, he will clearly explain the reason why the issues are problematic.

  • Complete audits

The complete audit has the same main structure as the diagnostic audit, but the purpose of the expert in ergonomics is no longer limited to giving feedback of the anomalies found. Beside the strengths and weaknesses, the audit report will contain the presentation of the main pages of your application as a functional mock-up.

User tests

The user tests are simulations of actual situations for your application or website. These user tests enable you to improve the ergonomics of your site or application.

In order to perform these tests, the expert in ergonomics selects a panel of representative users among a pool of people with various backgrounds and qualifications. Under his leadership, these people perform a series of specific tests in order to see how they interact with the site or application.

In order to ensure complete impartiality, these tests shall be performed remotely, by video-conference. Thus, the expert doesn’t influence the people of the panel, whereas the sound and video feedback will enable him to study every click they make as well as their behavior towards the case study they are about to perform.

Once the analysis stage is completed, the expert will start drafting a summary report which will be presented in a meeting during the feedback stage.

Pentalog Institute

Interface design

Pentalog Institute offers interface design services provided by its experts in ergonomics for new projects or for redesigning existing applications or sites. The expert in ergonomics supports you throughout the stage of illustration of ideas discussed during the meeting for establishing the requirements. Thanks to a well-honed iterative process, each of the parties may exchange ideas freely during the meetings without impeding the project. The functional mock-up of your application will gradually take shape as the mission of the ergonomics expert progresses.

Blueprint example. Annotations have been made to enhance understanding.

Acting as the pragmatic voice of users, the expert in ergonomics makes a critical assessment and suggests improvement solutions regarding the following:

  • Visual hierarchy
  • Content layout
  • Aspects related to graphic logic and compliance with graphic logic on all the pages
  • Ease of access to the information

In addition to this functional mock-up, we could also offer our graphic design services for creating a style guide (or adapting the existing style guide) and presenting it on all the mock-up pages designed by the expert in ergonomics.

Training

The training courses provided by Pentalog Institute target an audience of project managers, developers, webmasters and graphic designers. The expert in ergonomics will propose a training plan according to your needs either at your premises or at our offices. The duration of the training courses depends on the needs you have expressed and they can be delivered individually or in groups of 4 or 5 people.

Here is a list of the training courses we offer:

  • Interface ergonomics for standard applications or sites
  • Interface ergonomics for eCommerce sites
  • Interface ergonomics for mobile applications (phone, tablet etc.)
  • Accessibility of your application or site

Methodology

For each activity carried out by an expert in ergonomics or by a person from the graphic department, we propose a flexible methodology which favors permanent exchanges, especially at the beginning of a phase, in order to avoid the “tunnel effect”. These different exchanges can take place either remotely, by phone or via our screen-sharing tool, or directly at your premises.

The stages of a diagnostic audit:

  • Opening meeting for defining the scope
  • Audit of the existing application or website
  • Drafting a summary document containing the strengths and the lines of improvement
  • Feedback meeting

The stages of a complete audit:

  • Opening meeting for defining the scope
  • Audit of the existing application or website
  • Drafting a summary document containing the strengths and the lines of improvement
  • Creating a new functional mock-up for the site or application: during this stage, there is a constant exchange between our experts and your teams
  • Feedback meeting

Great Digital Products Aren’t Created By AccidentPentagility Means IT Excellence at Speed

Creating great software starts with a team infrastructure that breaks down silos, anticipates risks and communicates openly.
As an IT outsourcing provider, Pentalog equips teams with modular rules and dashboards, to ramp up, scale and pivot quickly, with minimal friction, maximum support and costs you control.
We call this toolkit Pentagility, an agile governance methodology for building trusted client relationships.

Interface design stages:

  • Studying the specifications or the existing application/site
  • Making a first draft on paper with a view to defining the interface principles
  • Detailing these principles on the main page types
  • Presenting the functional mock-up in a meeting or remotely
  • Integrating the observations and the design-related details on all the page types
  • Drafting a summary document with the presentation of the rules and conventions to be used if you choose the design of a graphic style guide or the integration of an existing style guide.
  • Proposing a graphic style guide based on the site’s homepage or on the main page of the application
  • Validating the graphic style guide together
  • Detailing the graphic style guide for the main page types
  • Delivery of a pack which contains the PSD files
  • Feedback meeting for all the deliverables: ergonomics principles, summary document and graphic screen mock-ups