Corporate overview
Why New York
Since our founding in 1975 we have been based in New York. Clients often ask us why a
company so deeply involved with technology is not based in Silicon Valley. Our answer is simply that
we are not a technology company but a technology research company. We know from extensive professional
experience that New York has more world-class research agencies, testing labs, educational institutions
and highly motivated and experienced research professionals than any other city in the world. We thrive on this
amazing environment where research drives the development of world-class interactive brands. Clients benefit
from our extensive network of allied research professionals and partners. We firmly believe that where we live
and work determines how we solve problems, develop client relationships, and deal with an increasingly
complex business landscape.
What we do / Problems we solve
In all usability testing programs, our goal is to help clients identify exactly why an important web site,
software interface, product, process, or service is complex. With this knowledge we help clients solve
the following types of problems:
- How to deepen user engagement with business-critical applications
- How to optimize your entire customer experience front to back
- Determine how to reduce training time and costs
- How to make hidden or complex features accessible to customers
- How to create highly usable products across competing development silos
- How to create standardized usability testing across product categories
- How to expand the quality of your brand by employing usability testing
- How to achieve "C-level" support for usability testing
- How to propagate usability science across complex agendas
- How to make a powerful infrastructure empowering for customers
- Determine which features and functions customers value.
- Determine which features and functions customers do not value
- Determine which features to fix and exactly how to fix them
- Determine what new features to add
- Determine which features to remove
- Determine how to reduce call-center and support costs
- Determine how to reduce legal liability and risk
- Determine how to reduce operational complexity
- Determine why your development team is in conflict
- Determine what constitutes success in your customers' minds
- Determine how to deliver success on time to core customers
- Determine what management actually wants you to build
How we serve our clients
We bring to all projects a high degree of professional focus and expertise in formal usability testing.
This allows our clients to have confidence in our ability to report to and work directly with the highest
levels of management. We tend to work on business-critical problems that are tactical and strategic in nature
with a special focus on responding to critical business objectives as defined by top management.
Why clients retain us
Over our 30-year history we have developed a reputation for delivering high levels of professional
research supported by creative and insightful solutions to the "complexity problem." Clients have the
satisfaction of knowing that our research approach is driven by their formal business objectives and that
their needs are our goals. Large and complex programs have been delivered on budget and in critical
instances ahead of schedule.
How we work with clients
At the core of how we work with our clients is a proprietary usability testing methodology that gives
structure to business objectives and delivers research solutions that are targeted at improving customer
acquisition, retention, and migration. Tactical and strategic development programs often begin with an
analysis of an existing product or service with the specific goal of identifying critical interaction
incidents that may be in conflict with formal business objectives. We frequently work directly with top
management, business analyst, product management, marketing, engineering, product development, and
retained management consultants.
How we got here
The firm was founded in 1975 by Charles L. Mauro. He believed in one overriding principle: that making
complex products and systems understandable and usable demanded the formal application of professional
human factors engineering during all phases of product development. His vision remains central to our
mission today. We were the first non-military consulting firm to create a formal usability testing lab
(1976), the first to create a highly structured and repeatable research methodology (1977) and the first
to employ web-based usability testing methods (1995). We have provided critical usability research for
systems currently running at the heart of the world economy.
What we believe
On a conceptual level we are guided by three principles:
- Data does not equal information
- Features do not equal functions
- Easy does not equal empowering
These principles embody three of the most difficult problems executives face today when dealing with the development, marketing, and support of high technology products and services. Our views on these three principles and our role in addressing the underlying conceptual issues define how we think about problems and what we believe to be central to our business mission.
