Yell: usability testing and concept design

The client

Yell was the directories business behind Yellow Pages, one of the most recognisable brands in Britain. Its core promise, helping people find the right local business, was moving online, and the web experience had to earn that promise on its own terms. We worked with Yell during our agency era at Agilisys.

The challenge

A directory lives or dies on speed. If finding the right plumber, restaurant or locksmith takes more than a few moments, people go elsewhere. The brief was to put the existing experience in front of real users, find out where it fell short, and design concepts for something better, built around how people actually search online rather than how the print product was organised.

What we did

We ran usability testing on Yell's existing experience and turned the findings into concept designs, drawing on the dedicated usability lab at our Hammersmith studio to watch real users work through real tasks.

Our approach

Evidence before aesthetics. We tested with users first, let the findings expose where the experience was failing them, then designed concepts to answer those specific problems. Designing first and validating later would have been faster; it would also have been guesswork.

Outcome

Yell came away with grounded usability findings and design concepts to match: an evidence-led view of how a national directory brand could work harder for its users online.

Context & coverage

Yell ran Yellow Pages and Yell.com, the UK's main business-directory properties of the era. The brand later faded as search engines absorbed the "find a local business" need, which makes this an interesting snapshot of a directory business trying to adapt to the web.