American Express OPEN Forum

What we do...
User Centric is a global user experience research and design firm with a long history of designing highly efficient and usable technologies. Our services include user research, user interface design consulting, information architecture, usability testing, user interface evaluations, eye tracking, and online surveys.

Our clients...
Our business uniquely benefits companies of all sizes. From Verizon Wireless to the Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago, our clients span many industries and market sizes. Our client base is so diverse because the products consumers or internal employees touch are so diverse. Whether it’s a Web site, a telephone, an accessory for the phone, the product you buy off the shelf or business enterprise software, those are all the things a user touches. As an example, we currently have a client with whom we are in eight different business units. We’re not doing management consulting. We’re actually touching interfaces, services and products. Our services range from small Web site usability evaluations to large global testing. We customize our services to meet each client’s goals and objectives.

How we surprise our clients...
The primary goal is to affect a positive change in the customer experience whether the customer is a businessperson, a consumer or an internal agent with the company. That’s our job. We often surprise them by revealing insights and ways to drive more usage just by having a methodology. We are not rocket scientists, but the outcomes of what we do change how people interact with products. They often don’t know their customers as one might expect. Our methodology places the customer in front of them in situations where they interact with the product. The client is sometimes too close to the product, but their customers have expectations and needs that we reveal.

Why we're different...
To quote one of our clients: “We hire User Centric because you care about the project as much as we do.” We don’t have sales staff. We feel the people who do the work are the ones who should prescribe approaches and methodologies and be responsible for the output. Our goal is to affect change. If we don’t provide value, our clients won’t come back.