Bolt | Peters | Clients

Modular Personas

Building on the modular persona work we started with Lynda.com, we worked with NYT to build their next generation of Personas.

UX Research Training and Advice

B|P trained the 2011 Code for America fellows on user research methods and advised several of the 2011 projects. For 2012, we are an official program partner for this leading Government 2.0 organization.

I.A., Research & Design

One of our longest-term and favorite clients. We've done Information Architecture, remote UX research, and light interaction design for VMware. Too bad we can't put our work in a virtualized cluster and virtualize it.

Working with the agency Team One, we conducted live remote prototype research from Lexus.com over several design projects and rounds of design that Team One conducted.

Ten projects over three years. Interaction design, UX research, and information architecture for different areas of sony.com and sonystyle.com. Remote research with hundreds of participants, design collaboration, and web product display strategy.

Spore, Pogo.com

Studied 59 gamers over 13 months playing a total of 393 individual gaming hours to evaluate the fun and player experience of Spore, one of the most anticipated computer games in history.

On-site live remote research and collaboration with the mint.com team prior to their acquisition by Intuit. Studied UX barriers to the new user flow and worked with the Mint team to improve the design.

In-car GUI prototype

Ethnographic field research of fourteen drivers in Los Angeles and the SF Bay Area, broadcasted live from inside participant's cars and homes.

Massive international study with 40 participants located all over the world, but heavily in Asia and Europe. B|P conducted remote observation in the middle of the night (yes, that costs a lot extra) to get on users' native workdays.

Field research in three cities helping Twitter's design researchers conduct in-person group interviews combined with live social recruiting and remote methods. Check out @ontheroad.

PetVille

B|P studied people in-person and remotely to uncover insights about the usability and player experience of Zynga’s newest game, PetVille.

Over 25 projects since 2007. We've worked on the user experience of AutoCAD, Autodesk.com, training, subscriptions, competitive analysis, reseller interfaces, and more.

Two studies involving two separate audiences. The first was a remote usability study of the Bank of America home page for Corporate & Institutional users with 100 automated users, and 8 moderated users. The second was a prototype evaluation with 9 CPAs on a new tool B of A developed for accountants.

Oceandefenders.org

On their Ocean Defenders Web Site, B|P Conducted an international remote study to uncover ways for donating to be easier, among other tasks.

A redesigned auto loan rate calculator, based on the findings from large scale remote usability testing, resulted in a 300% increase in users applying for a loan from the calculator.

B|P trained KQED on remote usability testing and Ethnio.

On-site social interaction research of Levi's early Facebook integration. Combining 50 participants completing an automated study and 5 moderated interviews, we worked with Facebook and Levi's to better understand social objects in the shopping experience.

Sybase wanted to identify how well their lead generation process and navigation was working for users. B|P helped Sybase identify key information that was missing for users and suggested improvements that would allow site visitors to navigate through the site much more easily, resulting in a better user experience.

Several research and design projects spanning six years. B|P has created progressive personas, conducted research on Dolby.com, and helped with the licensing extranet.

Adaptive Path hired B|P to conduct remote usability studies for several of their projects, including Informatica, National Gallery of Art, Aliant, and Fluent.

Along with card sorting and several usability studies, B|P conducted a training session for Oracle on the methodology behind remote usability testing and the use of Ethnio.

B|P worked with Techinsurance to redesign their site and help them communicate to site visitors the advantages of ContractEdge software. The results were significantly higher sales of the software and an improved web site for users to naturally and logically navigate through.

B|P helped Restoration Hardware significantly increase their conversion rate through several usability studies and by redesigning their checkout process.

BlueShield of California asked B|P to determine how well their Find a Provider tool was helping site visitors find physicians, hospitals, and other healthcare providers that would meet their needs.

Finding medical info online is a critically important and often frustrating process, so to help smooth the process over, we conducted a full-scale usability test of the site, leading to a complete redesign from the ground up, putting users’ priorities first.

To improve their web-based time reporting application, we spoke to 16 users, revealing issues with project detail entry and project coding that ended up validating their redesign of the interface.

Eight remote research studies over three years on both the web site and internal tools, using methods ranging from card sorting to moderated interviews to automated “sticky” studies.

In order to evaluate and improve their redesigned auto insurance quote process, AAA asked B|P to conduct a study on the quote process’s interaction design.

Wikipedia Usability Initiative

On behalf of the Wikipedia Usability Initiative, B|P watched people grapple with Wikipedia’s editing and uploading interfaces, both remotely and in-person.

B|P conducted remote usability studies to learn what users expect from CHCF.org, the CalNHS web site, and their newsletter sites. Findings have helped guide redesigns of these sites to better meet users’ needs.

Three research projects ranging from UX research of a high profile home page redesign to improving the usability of the washingtonpost.com city guides.

Helping Hot Studio conduct remote usability for the redesign of the SFMOMA web site, B|P got to work with the cool folks at Hot, as well as help with the web site of one of our favorite museums!

Crucial findings from remote usability testing on cruise selection and booking engine led to twice as many expected bookings for Princess Cruises.

Working closely with several teams at esurance, B|P has conducted in-person mobile research on the esurance iphone app, remote remote on the application process, and several detailed studies on the experience of esurance.com.

From mobile research to Mcafee research to Toshiba design to Ethnio training and support, we've collaborated on seven UX projects and counting since 2006 with our neighbors and friends at THE FISH.

By conducting a variety of studies, including laboratory usability, automated large-sample usability, and remote usability, B|P helped hallmark.com undertake the re-architecture of their public site to better meet the needs of users.

In just one day, B | P and Formspring were able to interact with 5 users remotely and in real-time. These interactions allowed Formspring to better understand how their users interact with their site.

On-site remote qualitative research with 12 participants for the quant masters at SurveyMonkey. We observed current users trying out a prototype of what has now become their new interface.

Having worked closely with the outstanding UX team at Blurb for years, B|P is proud to have collaborated on several blitzes focused on remote research on different features of the Blurb tools and web site.

International Teen No Go

The only absolute failure in B|P's history. Yup. We failed to find teenagers in Germany, Latin America, and France who had webcams, spoke english, and had a parent home for consent.

Our friends at Mindflash should put on a workshop about getting an entire company to participate in live remote research. Combining Campfire, GoToMeeting, and 40 people, B|P helped this awesome startup improve the UX of their web app.

God we use this service *a lot*. Also, international UX Blitz on-site at Open Table studying how people in the UK, and identifying barriers to conversion.

Behavioral study observing participants navigate a prototype of intel.com.

UX research and strategy on Deloitte's internal Knowledge Base involving interviews with 30 participants located in Mexico, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands. All participants spoke English.

Cooper partnered with B | P to advise on best practices for website experience surveys in the financial realm.

B | P worked with Intuit in a two-phase remote usability study to better understand and identify how to improve the check ordering process for new and returning customers.

Zecco asked B|P to help them address pain points in their application process, hoping to create a process that not only was faster, but felt faster as well.

Research and UX priorities workshop on-site at Splunk, focused on the observation of ten IT professionals (database administrators and technical architects) using Splunk for the first time.

Seven usability and UX projects since 2007 on hbr.org, the online magazine, higher education, and Manage Mentor - publishing for corporate learning.

Faceted search interface research and interaction design. The process of researching cars is one of the most fascinating and complex we have observed. Several studies with remote design research.

Study with teens on BOM411.com. Also, we love BSSP's logo.

When Best Buy wanted to know if their mobile site and app enhanced the in-store experience, they asked B | P to find out how user behavior interfaced with in-store retail behavior.

Prototype UX research for a radical new design of web-based agent interfaces, involving in-person research with 16 participants in two cities.

Using a hybrid of live recruiting, moderated research, and Usabilla. B|P conducted a collaborative UX research day with Rdio to help them improve the overall user experience for new visitors.

B | P conducted remote research on Yahoo's e-mail based photo sharing tool to see if it was intuitive and whether users found it functional.

B | P evaluated Ask.com's search result pages, making sure that their features were meeting the information needs of users.

Fashion requires sacrifice, and in this case we worked hard to create an attractive custom site-intercept for visitors to the Armani Exchange web site, and observed 16 individual visitors as they interacted with the live site. We collaborated with Armani to improve the usability of checkout and browsing.

Before their acquisition by Oracle, B|P helped Business Objects with it's information architecture after acquiring Crystal Decisions. One of our few enterprise software clients to *not* be bought by Oracle.

Remote ethnography with 15 participants using target.com, collaborating heavily with the W+K team to uncover behavioral insight to help Target think about the design of their shopping interfaces from a human perspective.

Remote ethnography with eight participants studying how people listen to and purchase music online. Absolutely fascinating. Additional studies with live remote intercepting of users and observation, and providing UX findings and recommendations to the Pandora team.

In-person research with 24 moderated participants on Wiley 's training web applications, and collaboration with the Wiley UX team on findings and recommendations.

Audience experience research with eight participants using an HBO Labs site studying the ways users search for and use online video.

Remote usability of music artists websites, the templates that drive new artists, and associated UX strategy. We used a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to help Warner understand the needs of music fans.