UX Firms

Bolt Peters

Website: http://www.boltpeters.com
Location: San Francisco, CA
About: Bolt | Peters is a creative research firm dedicated to transforming the personal, social, and cultural role of technology - in a good way. Since 2001, we have completed 231 projects with 1,300 participants, often times using research that is conducted remotely, with participants all over the world.

gotomedia

Website: http://www.gotomedia.com/
Location: San Francisco, CA
About: gotomedia is a strategic consultancy specializing in research, visual design and user experience design. Our user experience professionals and award-winning visual designers utilize research techniques to analyze the goals, needs and behaviors of the audience. The results inform the decision-making of clients, engineers, designers and business leaders. gotomedia's approach is scalable to all projects regardless of scope or size. The practice of iterative development cycles based on "function + form" allows our projects to quickly reach measurable business goals.

Dana Chisnell @ Usability Networks

Website: http://www.usabilityworks.net/
Location: San Francisco, CA
About:

Nielsen Norman Group

Website: http://www.nngroup.com/

Location: Freemont, CA

About: The philosophy of the Nielsen Norman Group is simple: To help companies enter the age of the consumer, designing human-centered products and services. Human-centered products emphasize user experience over factors like technology, features, or marketing points. "User experience" encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction with your company, your services, and your products. Human-centered products meet the exact needs of your customer, without fuss or bother. They are simple and elegant, a joy to own, a joy to use.

Your products reflect your overall company strategy and culture. In corporate cultures that emphasize technology, features, marketing points, or your company organization (in the case of websites), user experience is not given priority, and human-centered products will not result. Are your help lines too expensive? The fact that customers need so much help is a sign of poor products. Want a better product? You probably have to reorganize your company and change your product process.

Customer-centered, human-centered design requires corporate commitment, and a seamless merging of the services of multiple disciplines, including engineering, marketing, graphical and industrial design, and interface design. The results are faster design cycles, customers who are more satisfied and more loyal, and the transition of help lines and service desks from complaint posts and cost centers into positive customer experiences: a chance to interact and renew customer commitment, a chance to increase sales and loyalty.

UE Research

Website: http://www.ueresearch.com/index.php
Location: San Jose, CA
About: What makes UEresearch stand out? It's our team. We are brimming with experience, technical expertise, innovative ideas and business savvy. We also love the work we do! As a small firm, we are able to put focus and care on all of our clients’ projects. That is why leading companies as diverse as Dell Computer, Food Network and Hyundai come to us to provide the quality and service they need and deserve. With backgrounds ranging from marketing to clinical psychology to design, our team can provide you with a robust perspective that only comes when problems are examined from multiple angles at once. Deciding who to trust with your company's image, product and/or web design is never easy. UEresearch is a solid investment you can feel confident about. Born out of the successful design and usability company, theUEgroup, our experience and versatility can improve the way you do business!

Tangible UX

Website: http://www.tangible-ux.com/
Location: Mountain View, CA
About: Tangible is a User Experience consulting firm for Fortune 500, mid-market and start-up companies. Our clients span a wide range of industries, including communications, education, finance, media, entertainment, and high tech. We specialize in helping clients create intuitive, branded user experiences for sophisticated applications and corporate websites delivered across desktop, handheld, mobile, and stand-alone devices.

blink

Website: http://www.blinkinteractive.com
Location: Seattle, WA
About: Blink Interactive is a Seattle user experience consulting firm dedicated to helping clients achieve their business goals through a flexible user-centered design approach. Blink’s specialized focus on the user experience provides a level of service that result in highly usable and useful systems. Founded in 2000, Blink Interactive is among a select group of Interaction Designers, Usability Engineers and User Researchers with the education, experience and hands-on expertise to ensure a positive, productive user experience. Two central principles guide our work: Understand and balance the business goals of clients with the needs of their end-users. Incorporate user feedback into every project.

Because Blink’s service offerings are modular, we are able to partner with established development companies or work with our clients’ internal development teams. Blink works closely with these teams to ensure the client and users’ needs are addressed throughout the entire development phase.

Usability Matters

Website: http://www.usabilitymatters.ca/
Location: Toronto, ON, Canada
About: Our collective expertise encompasses a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences. We've worked across a range of industries, including media, education, automotive, travel, retail, financial, health and not-for-profit. We are comfortable and productive in a variety of work settings: as an integral part of your project team, as consultants, or as objective third-party observers. Our value is in bringing the user's perspective to the table - ensuring user requirements, motivations and goals are a project priority. We strive to create user experiences that exceed expectations while supporting business requirements.

Creative Good

Website: http://www.creativegood.com/
Location: New York, NY
About: Creative Good has an experienced team of customer experience consultants, all of whom have a track record of client business improvement.

User Interface Engineering

Website: http://www.uie.com/
Location: North Andover, MA
About: User Interface Engineering is a leading research, training, and consulting firm specializing in web site and product usability. Jared M. Spool founded the company back in 1988 and has built UIE into the largest organization of its kind in the world. With our in-depth research findings based on user observation, we empower development teams to create usable web sites that increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Advanced Common Sense

Website: http://www.sensible.com
Location: Chestnut Hill, MA
About: Steve Krug (pronounced “kroog”) is best known as the author of Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, now in its second edition with over 200,000 copies in print. But he’s also spent 20+ years as a usability consultant for a wide variety of clients like Apple, Bloomberg.com, Lexus.com, NPR, the International Monetary Fund, and many others. His consulting firm, Advanced Common Sense (“just me and a few well-placed mirrors”) is based in Chestnut Hill, MA. He currently spends most of his time teaching usability workshops, consulting, and working on a new book about do-it-yourself usability testing.

Meld

Website: http://www.meld.com.au/
Location: Australia
About: Meld Consulting was founded in December 2007 by Steve Baty. After spending the better part of 9 years with Web agency Red Square - the last two as Director of User Experience - Steve had a vision for a new type of Experience design consultancy, one with a balanced view of the people:business:technology tension.

Meld can provide you with a range of strategic and tactical user experience services suited to meet your needs. Our strengths in stakeholder and user research, analysis, and strategy provide you with the perfect way to get your project off on the right foot. Rather than following a fixed process, Meld focuses on the needs of your project and adopts the tools and techniques best suited to meeting those needs.

UX Research and Consulting

Website: http://www.ux-research.com/
Location: Montréal, Québec, Canada
About: UX Research & Consulting offers independent analysis, user research and testing at every stage of the development cycle to companies who wish to improve both usability and user experience. Our expertise includes webservices, desktop software, touch screen applications, interactive television, voice services, mobile devices, product documentation and customer/ physical retail interaction.

Navigation Arts

Website: http://www.navigationarts.com/
Location: McLean, VA
About: We recognize that users determine the success of an online experience. Accordingly, we design and build each Web experience according to the needs and preferences of its users, drawing on our expertise in user research and the talent of our senior consultants.

Akendi

Website: http://www.akendi.com/
Location: Toronto, ON, Ottawa, ON, Vancouver, BC
About: We are an informed design, usability research & product strategy firm. Passionate about the creation of informed designs – whether those designs involve physical products, software, web, or bricks-and-mortar interactions. We work closely with you to research, design, and test all aspects of the human experiences you deliver.