Info

XOLT is a Division of Vertical Research, Inc. XOLT is a full-service usability software design and implementation organization. We specialize in providing usability testing, design, development, and consulting services to a wide range of software development and business companies. We understand budgets, and we know how to read (and create) a project plan. We have been supporting the computer systems design community since our founding sixteen years ago in 1989, and our clients include companies with extensive usability programs already in place, as well as those who rely solely on us to provide usability, design and development services. We are located in the Boston, Massachusetts area of the United States. Our mailing address is XOLT, P.O. Box 1214, Brookline, MA 02446. Our telephone number is (617) 734-9563, and you can also contact us in several ways. We conduct user interviews and surveys, create user profiles, and provide task analysis services. We also conduct usability testing of prototypes or alpha/beta code, either at our usability lab or yours. All of these services are described in some detail on this site. In addition to usability testing and evaluation, we also provide software design and development services. These services are restricted to the client-server Microsoft Windows® environment, and the World Wide Web. We deliver our designs and prototypes as specifications, in custom HTML, in Macromedia's ColdFusion, and in PHP. We consult widely on web page design, and a rapidly accelerating part of our business is the implementation of complete web solutions with custom designed user interfaces. These solutions cover both information web site design and development, and web-based "thin client" application evaluation, design and development. The emphasis of our work is always the user experience. We also design and produce UI style guides for both Windows® and the web, and we can provide you with a basic, generic guide or we can work with your organization to customize a guide for your particular environment. Here is an example page from a Windows® style guide. In addition to design services, we provide many other innovative UI related services. For example our Remote Product Inspection service, begun seven years ago in 1995, was widely recognised as a leading edge Internet based service and briefly described in a paper presented at CHI'96. Remote usability evaluation techniques are now widely used, and even have their own web page. Look for us to continue to find novel and cost-effective ways of serving our clients going forward. While we are very interested in your business, we also want to be a resource to those who provide usability and design services as well as those who need them. One of the more popular pages at this site is our UI Index page, described long ago as an "excellent" HCI resource by the magazine Web Week (way back in July 1995, page 27). It's gotten a lot better since then! The UI Index page has been a major Internet resource for UI related information, thanks to sponsorship. The UI Index is not just a list of links, but a carefully annotated and categorized resource of user interface related information on the Internet. We have visited every source link on the UI Index pages, and we provide you with a thumbnail description of each URL so that you will have some idea of what the site contains before you visit it. A major time saving! Additionally, the Index is a little quirky and contains entries that you may not find just by entering "user interface" in a search engine. The assumption is that you want to go a little deeper into the field and that you have the time to browse. We focus on commercial companies, in part because we are a commercial company ourselves, but also because most of the other indexes largely ignore commercial sites. You will find links to many of our competitors on the UI Index page, and we encourage any company that provides user interface related services to send us their URL and we will include it in our UI Index.