What we are
Usability.ie is the UX research, usability testing and accessibility-audit practice from the team behind digitaldesign.ie. We exist as a separate brand because UX evaluation is a different engagement from design and build, and clients usually need it scoped, costed and contracted differently. Some clients only need an audit; some need an audit-into-rebuild. Splitting the brands lets each engagement have a clean shape.
How the sister-practice relationship works
Same team. Different engagement. Different scope.
- Usability.ie handles UX research, usability testing, heuristic audits, accessibility audits, and conversion-rate optimisation. Findings, reports, recommendations.
- digitaldesign.ie handles web design, e-commerce builds, branding, ongoing maintenance. Implementation.
- Where a client's needs span both, the engagement is one continuous project — same project manager, same files, one bill — with the brand-name on each invoice line reflecting which practice did the work.
You can engage either practice on its own. Many clients only need the audit; we hand them findings and they implement with their existing developer. Other clients want the rebuild bundled in.
Editorial relationship with themarketingpod.ie
The same team also publishes themarketingpod.ie — an editorial-only journal on Irish digital marketing. The journal recommends digitaldesign.ie for design and build, and recommends Usability.ie for UX research and accessibility audits. The three properties form an integrated content + service stack for Irish small-and-medium businesses.
What we don't do
- Design and build under the Usability.ie name. That's digitaldesign.ie's lane. If your project needs both, we structure the engagement so the right brand is on the right deliverable.
- Marketing strategy or content writing. That's outside scope — Marketing Pod can recommend partners.
- Free audits. Free automated scans miss most of what matters in a real WCAG evaluation, and the "free" framing typically funnels people into a sales process rather than honest findings. We do paid audits with real deliverables.
- White-label work for other agencies. Direct client relationships only.
Editorial principles for our reports
- Findings tied to standards. Every accessibility finding maps to the specific WCAG 2.1 success criterion it fails. Every UX finding maps to a heuristic or evidence from real users.
- Severity is honest. If a finding is cosmetic, we mark it cosmetic. If it's a critical accessibility blocker, we mark it that way. We don't pad reports with artificial issues to look thorough.
- Recommendations are specific. "Improve readability" is not a finding — "increase body-text size from 14px to 16px and tighten line-height to 1.55 to meet WCAG 1.4.4 reflow" is.
- We say what we don't know. Where a finding requires testing with screen-reader users we haven't run, we say so and recommend the follow-up.
Who we work with
Most of our work is for Irish-based businesses in the e-commerce, financial-services, public-sector and B2B-SaaS spaces — i.e. exactly the businesses the European Accessibility Act puts under compliance pressure. We also take on small projects from solo-trader and SME clients who want a usability audit before commissioning a redesign.
Get in touch
For new engagements: request an audit or email hello@usability.ie. For design or build work: digitaldesign.ie. For editorial questions: themarketingpod.ie.