It seems that using personas becoming more and more popular in design, marketing, and even business strategy, but are they worth the effort? Aren’t they a bit fluffy? Can they really provide great value? Ultimately, how will they help you improve conversion and bottom line? At PurpleFire we spend a significant amount of our time […]

I’ve always found personas to be useful and effective tools for creating truly user-centered website experiences. However, during my time as a strategist, optimiser and all round UX geek, I have come across many who don’t feel the same way. For example, Steve Portigal, author of Interviewing Users, suggests that “personas are user-centered bullshit’. What are […]

We have recently produced a downloadable 1 page process overview for User Centered Design (UCD). I felt that it will be good to share this with our blog readers rather than this just been part of our consultancy process with our direct clients. Below I have pulled out all the definitions of each phase in the […]

Web design has recently come under fire for its ‘lack of creativity’ with some people even saying that all websites are starting to look the same. These types of articles have had a lot of criticism from other web designers. And on first reflection, yes, websites are starting to look similar. As a creative who has watched the web grow […]

The fairly decent English summer has come to an end and if you’re like me you’ve started to look for a break away from the cloudy skies and 9 – 5 routine. Researching and booking holidays is one of my favourite things to do. Like the majority of people, I look to the internet to start […]

UX design is dead. Long live UX design. I recently read an interview with a UX designer in .net magazine. The article’s opening line was a quote from the designer… ‘I designed the website with the user in mind’. I stopped reading. As opposed to what?!  I thought. Who would design a website not thinking about the user? […]

In broad terms, user-centered design (UCD) is a design philosophy and a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of the end user of an interface or document are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process. This helps to put customers at the heart of the online experience. By designing for […]

Brand values… What are they? Do they matter? Is it just some marketing fluff? Do customers care? How do you develop them? Is it worth the effort developing them? Back in early 2017, if you would have asked me what are the brand values of PurpleFire I wouldn’t have been able to give you a […]

What is Ecommerce best practice? Ecommerce best practice has been used as a standard set of guidelines to follow for Ecommerce sites. Ecommerce best practice guidelines give partially validated guidance and the basics for key pages on Ecommerce sites. For example: navigation should be clear; the product page should include multiple high-quality images, a price […]

In most businesses, design is still seen as ‘the arty thing’, ’the colouring in’ or the least important part of the process. Low down in the pecking order or lumped in with stuff like marketing. C-suite level professionals are constantly bombarded with so many aspects of business that they can become ‘MOBD’ (Microsoft Office Blind) […]