Visual Design is the culmination of color, typography, iconography, photography, graphics, and layout to create the look and feel of a web site, presentation, advertisement, or marketing piece.

Typical deliverables include:

• Identity/Branding
• Icons
• Illustrations
• Information Graphics
• User Interface Design
• Mood Boards
• Ad Creation
• Collateral Materials
• Design Presentations
• Design Specifications

User Experience Design (UX) most frequently defines a sequence of interactions between a user (individual person) and a system, virtual or physical, designed to meet or support user needs and goals, primarily, while also satisfying systems requirements and organizational objectives.

Typical deliverables include:

• Site Audit (usability study of existing assets)
• Flows and Navigation Maps
• User stories or Scenarios
• Persona (Fictitious users to act out the scenarios)
• Site Maps and Content Inventory
• Wireframes (screen blueprints or storyboards)
• Prototypes (For interactive or in-the-mind simulation)
• Patterns
• Interaction specifications (describing the behavior)
• Graphic mockups (Precise visual of the expected end result)

Information Architecture (IA) can best be defined by the following: The structural design of shared information environments; The combination of organization, labeling, search and navigation systems within web sites, intranets, online communities, and software; The art and science of shaping information products and experiences to support findability and usability; An emerging discipline and community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape. In layman's terms, IA is the design of information.

Typical deliverables include:

• Content Inventories (content assessment to identify scope)
• Detailed Content Audit
• Site Maps & Content Maps
• Navigation Schema
• Use Case / Requirements Documentation
• Scenarios
• Case Studies & Stories
• Conceptual Diagrams
• Affinity Diagrams
• Wireframes (blue prints)
• Paper Prototypes
• Lo-Fidelity Functional Prototypes
• Content Strategy Report

User Centered Design (UCD), also called Usability, is a design philosophy and a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of the end user of an interface or document are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process.

The chief difference from other interface design philosophies is that user-centered design tries to optimize the user interface around how people can, want, or need to work, rather than forcing the users to change how they work to accommodate the software developers approach.

Typical deliverables include:

• Market Definition (Define target audience & identify competitors)
• Competitive Evaluation
• User Research (focus group, interviews, user surveys )
• Persona Definition
• Task/Purpose analysis
• Workflow analysis (work flow, scenarios)
• Conceptual/Mental model, metaphors, design concepts
• Wireframes (blue prints)
• Paper Prototypes
• Lo-Fidelity Functional Prototypes
• Design walkthoughs ("cognitive walkthroughs")
• Heuristic Evaluation (inspection for known usability problems)
• Usability Testing (paper, low fidelity - high fidelity; informal - formal)
• Usability Report