About Us

Optimal Usability is a user-focused Internet consulting and services firm.

The company evolved from conversations between a software engineer and an industrial designer. The directors' mutual passion for easy-to-use technology and their dissatisfaction with the usability of the web drove them to action.

Optimal Usability was incorporated in early 2003 to provide web usability services to medium- to large- sized businesses in New Zealand and throughout Asia and the Pacific.

Our Team

The directors, Trent Mankelow and Sam Ng, combine their experience in software engineering, human computer interaction and user-centred design to offer smarter and more effective ways to cater for users of websites and computer systems.

We have a multi-disciplinary team of talented usability professionals and researchers who share our passion for more usable interfaces. Our wide range of backgrounds means our analysis has greater depth and is more thorough.

Our Process

For us, usability is not about which colours are nice and which words sound better. We use proven methodologies to understand user behaviour and usability.

What we offer our clients:

A proven methodology: We find ways to understand customers' wants and needs, which translate into user-centred products.
A single focus: We're focused on crafting the user experience. We do this one thing, and we do it well.
A talented team: Our diverse group of usability professionals, information architects and industrial designers provides a level of competency, synergy and flexibility.
A flexible partnership: We tackle meaningful projects with clients who we see as partners; we teach, inspire and learn from each other.

We don't believe in getting our clients to spend money on usability just for the sake of usability. We believe in determining what's most important and putting effort into getting those things right.

We believe that usability people must provide a good example to their clients by ensuring that their work and results are usable.

What We Believe

We are a passionate group of believers in the value of usability and user-centric design. We believe that it is about helping people do what they want, not about how smart the technology is.

Our philosophy on usability for Internet technologies is summed up in three points:

1. Understanding the user is the key to a successful web site. It is well established that users tend to return to sites that they find easy to use and rate them as being more satisfying. Furthermore, improving usability can lead to a drastic increase in conversion rates for e-commerce sites.

2. Usability and accessibility complement design and technology. A usable web site does not have to be visually unappealing. It is a constant challenge to balance good graphic design and usability, but the rewards for sites that achieve this balance are high. Furthermore, web usability testing can benefit any type of web site on any platform. Accessibility isn't just about producing web sites for disabled people. Producing truly accessible sites means that your content can be easily read by any user on virtually any Internet-enabled device.

3. Usability is about the user. Usability analysis is ultimately only as good as the research that supports it. A truly objective assessment is only possible if research is meticulously planned and executed. We only work with experienced researchers who have the experience and statistical expertise to carry out usability testing to the highest standard.

Did this page answer your questions about us? If there was something we left out then please don't hestitate to send us some email.