Sister-practice relationship
Usability.ie is the UX research, testing and accessibility-audit practice from the same team as digitaldesign.ie and the editorial site themarketingpod.ie. Where we recommend digitaldesign.ie for design and build work — including in audit reports — we do so because the sister-studio relationship makes handover seamless, not because we receive separate referral fees. Where another studio is the right fit (because of geography, project type, or client preference), we say so and we do not insist.
What we accept money from
- Direct client engagements — audits, testing, research, CRO retainers. This is our entire revenue.
- Combined engagements with digitaldesign.ie when a client wants both audit and rebuild under one engagement. The bill specifies which work was done by which practice.
What we don't accept money from
- Software vendors. No paid placements, no affiliate links, no sponsored mentions of testing platforms, accessibility tools, A/B-test tools, analytics packages, or anything else.
- Other agencies. No white-label work. No sub-contracted reports under a third party's name.
- Auditors' kickbacks. Some audit firms operate referral arrangements with developers who do remediation. We do not. Recommendations in audit reports are not steered by a separate revenue stream.
How we handle conflict of interest
The sister-practice arrangement is itself a potential conflict — we have an obvious incentive to recommend digitaldesign.ie. We manage it the same way other consultancies manage advisor-implementer conflicts:
- Audit findings are written without reference to who would implement them. Severity scoring is based on user impact, not implementation cost.
- Where a client has an existing developer relationship that's working, we recommend keeping it.
- Where the client wants combined-engagement work via digitaldesign.ie, the engagement specifies which deliverables come from each practice on the invoice.
- If a finding is most appropriately addressed by a specialist outside our practice (e.g. a major back-end refactor), we say so.
Standards we cite
- WCAG 2.1 AA (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) — the technical standard the European Accessibility Act references. Maintained by the W3C.
- Nielsen Norman Group's 10 Usability Heuristics for heuristic audits.
- European Accessibility Act (EU Directive 2019/882) and the Irish transposition (European Union (Accessibility Requirements of Products and Services) Regulations 2023).
- ICE (Impact / Confidence / Ease) prioritisation for CRO hypothesis ranking.
Corrections
Spot a factual error in an article or report? Email hello@usability.ie with "Correction:" in the subject. We update affected pages within seven days; the article-meta date will reflect the change.
Contact
Editorial questions, methodology questions, complaints: hello@usability.ie or via the contact form.