Toronto Usability Companies

A brief history of user experience design in Ontario's capital city

Toronto usability companies were few and far between in 1998, the early era of the World Wide Web. Interpix Design was one of the first companies in Toronto to take usability seriously. "Back in those days, there were no conferences, no standards, very little in the way of metrics. Advances in Human Computer Interaction (Jakob Nielsen) was only a couple years old and really known only to a handful of geeks," says Murray Sanders. "We worked at one of the big banking offices downtown. You knew who the interaction design people were because we were the ones who came to the office in shorts. In those days we focused mainly on design. Usability became an area of specialisation a little while later."

There were a few other usability companies in Toronto in those early days. 4th Medium was also fledgling. Quarry was a small company growing steadily, about an hour outside of Toronto. In '98 Murray and his usability partner Jamie Ingham stepped out on their own with Interpix Design.

They quickly established Interpix as the premiere Toronto usability company to consult with if you wanted usability for your finance related web site. Earlier work for TD Canada Trust led to user experience design work for numerous other banking and finance firms, including Bank of Montreal (as it was then known), CIBC and RBC, along with other prestigious firms including MicroSoft, NCR, Rogers and numerous others.

"We've had the privilege of being the usability company for many of Toronto's best known companies," says Murray Sanders, Principal at Interpix. "We like to think there's something unique about Toronto. Being a Canadian company gives us a unique position to create user experiences for both American and European users and to help those two different markets communicate with each other.

"We look forward to a healthy future in the arena of Toronto usability. As new technology renders more and more products with a variety of interfaces, we want to be there to help as many companies as possible - from Toronto, Canada, North America and the rest of the world - optimise their user experience."

Make Interpix your Toronto usability company