The art of keeping it simple

The company, which also has offices in Auckland and Australia, has achieved annual growth of 300 to 400 per cent in recent years and was ranked 27th in the 2007 Deloitte-Unlimited Fast 50 index of New Zealand's fastest growing companies.

Its consulting division has 17 staff and conducts behavioural research, observing clients' customers as they interact with products such as mobile phones and Air New Zealand's new electronic check-in kiosks, and advising on basic design concepts.

Its product division, Optimal Workshop, develops software to help companies design and test websites. It has three staff and about 3000 customers including Nasa and the BBC, and the goal is to turn it into a $15 million business with 20,000 to 30,000 customers in five years, Mr Ng says.

Optimal Workshop will rent out its software to customers rather than chase big contracts with big corporates.

"We'll pursue models that as much as possible keep our overheads down and allow us to scale more easily. We're really trying to aim, with most customers, to not charge anything more than about $1000 because if you go above that, then you have to get into business cases and sales teams."

Mr Ng and co-director Trent Mankelow established Optimal Usability six years ago after becoming frustrated with poor "usability" of systems and websites.

"We had both been involved with really big IT projects that failed to take off. Millions of dollars went to waste because no-one could be bothered using them."

Businesses tend to forget a system's interface is the actual product, Mr Ng says. "People don't care how fancy the technology is behind a product, if it looks ugly and works ugly, they'll say it's a bit of a dog. Quite often, the return is in people's behaviour rather than the product itself."

While the global potential is in its software, Optimal Usability will continue its consultancy work in New Zealand and Australia where it advises corporates such as Telstra on how to develop inhouse usability expertise.

Sixty per cent of its product business is based in North America so the company faces the challenges of courting and supporting customers from afar, Mr Ng says. "The main challenge is around building awareness specific to each locale, and they're not necessarily cultural but also organisational differences.

"Playing up the New Zealand angle helps us there's an affinity to New Zealand. People ask us how the hobbits are."

- © Fairfax NZ News