Paul Rouke - Usability Professional

As part of our brand development and marketing strategy work for UCDcommerce, I have been working on brand logo concepts.

My key considerations are:

• representing User Centered Design, the foundation for UCDcommerce (hence the brand name!)
• symbolising customer conversion, which again is an integral aspect of the platform
• adopting a clean, minimal identity, representing the clarity at which our e-commerce solutions are based upon
• balancing the corporate, blue chip retailing look and feel with a slightly personal, fun tone of voice
• adopting aspects of our existing brand identity at PRWD

Symbolising User Centered Design

In order to symbolise this fundamental aspect of UCDcommerce, I immediately considered a circle, as this is already used within the PRWD logo to symbolise the continuous cycle of User Centered Design. By this I mean that our solutions/platforms/systems are never finished in the traditional sense, where you don’t go back to something again that is fit for purpose. Instead we continually monitor the performance of our delivered systems following the deployment stage, both because we work with our clients long term but also because providing an exceptional user experience is an on-going process of continual improvement.
This in turn means our processes come full circle as per any high quality User Centered Design process.

Symbolising Customer Conversion

For symbolising Customer Conversion, one of my interpretations of this for e-commerce site’s is of a user/customer starting off unfulfilled. In order to convert this visitor they need to feel fulfilled, in terms of their enjoyment, satisfaction at the shopping journey and having being able to find what they were looking for (if they were in fact sure of what they were after when they arrived at the store!).

Using circles of different shadings, with the use of borders where you would otherwise lose the visibility of lighter shades, I began to play around with circles of different sizes, styles and strengths. See what you think below…

UCDcommerce Identity and Website is Coming

We are absolutely delighted with the progress being made on both the brand identity and the long term marketing strategy for UCDcommerce, and we will soon be launching the the new brand and website to the retailing industry and the usability community.