Specialist Usability Services
Usability Reviews, User Testing, Training, Consultancy
About Us
PRWD (PRoductivity Without Difficulty) are a usability and conversion optimisation consultancy providing a range of usability services for websites, intranets and business systems, and is run by usability expert Paul Rouke. We work with a wide range of businesses including many household names.
PRWD was founded in 2006 and has since become recognised in the North West as the leading usability consultancy, whilst establishing strong working relationships with some of the industries most respected organisations including Econsultancy.
Paul works with a range of business associates and consultants to deliver projects of varying scale, along with working 1-1 with clients who look for expert usability consultancy, training and heuristic evaluations.
Paul Rouke, Head of Usability
Paul Rouke founded PRWD in 2006 following 7 years working in usability and customer experience at the UK's largest home shopping business Shop Direct Group. At PRWD, as well as providing usability evaluations, user testing and usability training directly to PRWD clients, Paul is one of the few industry professionals providing both public and in-house training for the highly respected Econsultancy, the leading source of independent advice and insight on digital marketing and ecommerce.
Through his training courses Paul thrives on helping businesses and individuals learn how they can improve the performance of their online operations.
Paul has over 10 years usability experience working with large and blue chip brands, including:
- Speedo International - usability consultancy
- Lakeland - usability testing and consultancy
- JD Williams - usability consultancy
- Isabella Oliver- usability testing and consultancy
- The Scout Association - usability training and consultancy
Stephen Frater, Project Director
Stephen is an experienced Project Director within the digital space having entered the industry in 1995 as a content editor. As the industry grew in the late 90s, Stephen’s career progressed quickly into project management and further into technical and operations management.
Stephen is a qualified PRINCE2 Practitioner and holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Project Management.
Over the past decade Stephen has delivered numerous high profile branded websites as well as providing account director services to a number of blue chip clients.
Selection of projects previously managed:
- Barclays – online competitions and surveys
- Barclaycard – official Premier League sponsorship website
- BJL – provision of project management services for Manchester’s leading independent advertising agency
- Carling – website and web applications plus account management growth
- JD Sports – first website of the retail brand
- Molson Coors – various brand websites, corporate website, implementation of technical platform
- Nationwide – official website of the Home Nations sponsorship
- Premier League – ticket availability website
- The Rugby Football Union – official England website of the 2007 Rugby World Cup
Paul Stubbs, Senior Business Systems Analyst
Paul is a highly experienced Business Systems Analyst with over 20 years commercial experience. Paul has a proven successful record of implementing innovative IT solutions providing measurable benefits in line with company strategy and direction. Paul has strong technical, management and analytical skills with a business led approach to development projects and services using structured methodology in project analysis and implementation.
Paul's specialties include:
- Analysis of business needs
- Business and system process mapping, evaluation and streamlining
- Identification of requirements and successful implementation of benefit led solutions for business
- Extensive business analysis skills and experience
- Very strong IT analysis and project implementation skills at all levels
James Robinson, E-commerce Consultant
James has over 12 years experience in development, management and refinement of websites. Starting his career as a developer he understands the technology which underpins the web and this helps to translate business needs in to deliverable sites. Using this knowledge James now specialises in project managing website redevelopment projects, helping to deliver projects on time and budget. As well as being PRINCE2 qualified James uses his experience in the fields on usability, wireframing and information architecture to ensure projects remain customer focused.
E-commerce re-platforming projects that James has worked on projects include:
- Past Times
- Royal Doulton
- Halfords
- Planet Organic
- Evans Cycles
Econsultancy
Econsultancy is a community where the world's digital marketing and ecommerce professionals meet to sharpen their strategy, source suppliers, get quick answers, compare notes, help each other out and discover how to do everything better online.
Founded in 1999, Econsultancy has grown to become the leading source of independent advice and insight on digital marketing and ecommerce.
PRWD's Industry Relationship
- Paul Rouke delivers training for Econsultancy on Usability and User Experience
- Paul Rouke delivers training for Econsultancy on E-commerce Usability and Best Practice
- Paul Rouke writes expert usability commentary articles on their award winning blog
Smart Insights
Smart Insights help marketeers to "join the dots" by discussing the challenges of how to best integrate and optimise today's marketing channels.
The Smart Insights expert commentators including author Dr Dave Chaffey share best practices with commenters on the core digital marketing techniques, that's digital strategy, web analytics, site optimisation, social media marketing, search engine marketing, affiliate marketing and email marketing.
PRWD's Industry Relationship
- Paul is one Smart Insights expert industry commentators, providing tips and advice on usability and conversion optimisation
- Read Paul's article Increasing New Customer Conversion Rates
- Read Paul's article User Testing 101 - should we go guerrilla?
- PRWD and Smart Insights collaborate on client projects where suitable
What Users Do
whatusersdo is an online User Experience research service. You can set a task for their users and they then record their screens and spoken thoughts as they complete that task. You can then watch online videos of their screens and voices.
Clients use whatusersdo to test usability, benchmark competing websites, better understand user behaviour and get feedback on their online propositions.
PRWD's Industry Relationship
- As well as providing lab based, moderated user testing we use whatusersdo to produce quick, cost-effective and un-moderated user testing videos for our clients' websites and applications, which we then evaluate and provide recommendations for changes and improvements
- whatusersdo have clients coming directly to them to use their service, and where required we provide the analysis and recommendations to their clients based on our extensive user testing experience
UPA - Usability Professionals Association
The Usability Professionals' Association (UPA) supports people who research, design, and evaluate the user experience of products and services.
The UPA was established in 1991 and continues to be the organisation of choice for usability professionals worldwide.
PRWD's Industry Relationship
- Paul Rouke is a member of the Usability Professionals Association and has been since 2006
Manchester Digital
Manchester Digital is the independent trade association for the thriving ICT and new media industries in the North West of England.
Manchester Digital's vision is simple, that by working together they can make Manchester and the North West an even better place for Digital Business.
PRWD's Industry Relationship
- PRWD have been a registered member company since 2007
- PRWD sponsored and Paul Rouke presented at a Manchester Digital event titled: Usability - Whats The Use?
Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU)
Manchester Metropolitan University was awarded university status in 1992 and is part of the largest higher education campus in the UK and one of the most extensive education centres in Europe.
The central campus is situated close to Manchester's city centre. There are six further campus locations, four in other parts of the city and two in Cheshire, 36 miles from Manchester.
PRWD's Industry Relationship
- PRWD are a partner with MMU for their user testing laboratory at their main Manchester campaus
- PRWD helped to launch the MMU user testing lab facilities in November 2010 - view the press release for the MMU user testing lab launch
Clients Comments
Hover over each logo to read comments from that client
Services Provided
Usability and User Testing"I have been very impressed with the user testing service PRWD have provided, from initiation through to delivery.
The insights that we gained from the users have been valuable, but what made the project a particular success was what Paul brought to the table. Without his considerable experience we would never have created the right scenarios for the users, or indeed have been able to glean the right information from the videos.
The report that Paul created was impressive from cover to cover, allowing me to create a long list of improvements to action. The meetings with Paul felt like a real collaboration, with him drawing on my knowledge of our site and users, mixing with his considerable industry experience. I would not hesitate to recommend PRWD to anyone who is serious about improving the usability of their website."
Stuart McMillan, E-commerce Operations Manger at AllSaints
Services Provided
Usability and User Experience Training"I became aware PRWD and was immediately impressed with the level of expertise and reference able collateral on show on their website.
It was a no brainer for me; being local was also a major plus point as there is clearly a lack of expertise in this field north of London. Paul proved invaluable on the day as he led us through ‘idea after idea’ in which we could improve our services to our clients. His knowledge of the subject was clear for all to see and his approach to training very professional.”
Taz Ali, Creative Services Manager at Hitachi Consulting
"Working with PRWD has been invaluable.
Paul is very logical and detailed in his approach and communicated his findings very clearly to help us see things differently. We’re looking forward to seeing the results of his recommendations."
Paul McDermott, Head of E-Commerce at Speedo International
“At Lakeland we’re committed to listening carefully to what our customers want, and tailoring our business to their needs. So when it came to launching our new website it was vital we included their feedback on our ideas during the build of the new site.
This feedback, gathered for us by PRWD via a series of usability tests, was extremely valuable and actionable and the resulting site has been received very positively”
Tony Preedy, Marketing Director at Lakeland
Services Provided
Usability and User Testing"A very good service that has provided some extremely valuable insights into how people really use our site."
Stuart Aiken, New Media Manager at Visit Manchester
Services Provided
Usability and User Experience TrainingPaul Rouke delivered his Usability and User Experience training course for Econsultancy, and it was attended by one of the web team at Benenden Healthcare Society
"Paul has clear and specific expertise which he is able to bring to bear in very efficient and effective way. The turnaround and quality of this work was exceptional, and I will be asking Paul to provide more help in the future ."
John Byrne, Product Development Director, UK Commercial Speedy Services
"The fact that I would repeat the usability tests in the future is testament to the invaluable findings from the tests and the level of expertise provided by PRWD."
Claire McNulty, Senior Marketing Manager at Isabella Oliver
