Discovery & Prototyping
Before we build anything, we take the time to properly understand what we're building and why. The Discovery and Prototyping phase is about shaping a clear, shared view of the problem, and the most effective way to solve it. This is where digital innovation begins: by uncovering what users need, what the business requires, and what success looks like.
Research
Digital Marmalade will help devise the most commercially viable approach to uncovering meaningful insights to meet your specific project requirements and budget.
We will liaise with key stakeholders, business analysts, your commercial and operational teams, and your customers, in order to gain a thorough understanding of your organisation, your digital assets, and your customers' expectations.
This collaborative process enables better decisions, faster iteration, and sets the tone for digital innovation throughout the lifecycle of the project.
Techniques to measure and improve performance
Competitor Analysis
Reviewing your competitor's online activities, UI, technical approaches, strengths and weaknesses.
Technical Analysis
Understanding the existing systems, processes, data feeds and any third party integration requirements.
Analytic Reports
Analysing any existing web traffic, inventory and performance reports that you might have in place.
Marketing Review
Discussing commercial goals, marketing activities and campaigns and social media.
Content Review
Reviewing existing information architecture, customer journeys and content strategy.
Customer Surveys
Customer feedback through online surveys to help gather, rate and prioritise features.
Customer Interviews
One to one interviews to discuss the customer's needs, opinions, attitudes and perceptions.
Customer Usability Tests
Either face to face or online observations of targeted customers performing specific tasks to help confirm or deny assumptions and identify strengths, weaknesses and potential UX issues. Depending on the requirements, we can take this a step further and go deeper in tracking customer behaviour through heat map analysis and eye tracking studies.
User Experience (UX) Design
Now that we have identified the full scope of the project, the next step is to turn your strategic objectives into a clear, commercially advantageous digital vision. This is done through a series of collaborative workshops where the whole project team can explore and evaluate the options.
We use our expertise to rapidly create interactive wireframe prototypes to help communicate ideas, which can quickly be reviewed, questioned, and continuously improved during the discovery phase, as well as during an agile development process. Every step of a user journey is considered, as well as the backend management tools that power each process.
By uniting your team's business insights with our technical expertise, we can quickly and cost-effectively bring ideas to life. These prototypes bring clarity and simplicity to this complex process, allowing the stakeholders to assess ideas visually and sign off on the project plans with confidence.
This stage helps bridge the gap between ideas and execution, a core part of delivering meaningful digital innovation.
Project definition
The interactive wireframes will serve as a detailed project blueprint for the designers, developers, and management team to follow. Our project team will work through the research notes and prototypes to identify and set out:
- A minimum viable product
- A short-term tactical feature set
- A long-term strategic feature set
- A prioritised list of deliverables
- The technical architecture
- A roadmap and rollout strategy
- Project timelines
- Cost estimates
- Measurable project KPIs
The result
The end result is a statement of work that clearly outlines the project scope, cost, and expectations of all parties, guaranteeing that everyone is aware of the next steps. This process sets the stage for confident planning and supports measurable, scalable digital innovation from day one.