Effective user experience design depends on working from a solid strategic foundation. EightShapes builds that foundation by helping organizations understand their users, their business, and their content. To communicate each of these aspects, we construct models that highlight the important parts of each concept:

• User models, in the form of profiles or personas, inform the design process by capturing what users expect to get out of the system. EightShapes' user models focus on behaviors, motivations, and decisions.
• EightShapes builds workflows to understand business operations, and assess the impact of a new web site on day-to-day activities of people whose jobs intersect with the web site, like content contributors.
• To establish an understanding of an organization's content, EightShapes constructs content models. These models help define scope, serve as the basis for gap analyses, and provide input into information architecture activities.

Building these models requires research and analysis, usually in the form of interviews with users and stakeholders, and site audits, looking at the existing content and identifying patterns.

Contact EightShapes to learn more about laying a strategic foundation for effective design work.