Usability Partners - from its origins through to the present day. A brief look back at how and why the company was formed...

The Usability Partners story started back in the late 1980s with the formation of a company called Nomos. Like Usability Partners, Nomos too was an independent consultancy, though its services developed into two business areas - 'usability' and 'ergonomics' (the later focused on hardware ergonomics, workplace design and research projects). The consultants in the company traded under the name 'Nomos' between 1988 and 2001.

Usability Partners was born out of the 'usability' consultancy segment of Nomos, and started business in the autumn of 2001. Richard Whitehand (formerly the business area manager for 'usability') and several other experienced usability consultants from Nomos were those that made up the original "Usability Partners" and some are still part of the team today.

In forming Usability Partners, one of the important goals was to be able to offer usability services throughout the development process, rather than focusing only on testing and evaluation as was done earlier.

Usability activities can be integrated into the entire development cycle through our user-centred design process which enables interface design ideas to be created based on a good understanding of user requirements. Interface design work is strongly task related, focused on meeting the needs of intended users and supporting them in their work. Much of the process is based on the International standard ISO 9241-210 (a standard dealing with human-centred design for interactive systems).

The advent of the Internet has seen a significant increase in awareness of the importance of ease of use. Focusing on usability and user experience (UX) focus has become central in web and mobile app design. For many interactive services, such as those in the banking or e-commerce area, good usability and UX design is a decisive factor in success. If users can't use it, then it simply doesn't work and the development investment will be lost.

Today, Usability Partners is one of the leading usability and UX consultancies in Scandinavia with a wide range of services to support the design and evaluation of different types of products and systems.