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Design that survives contact with the build

Screens that look good in a presentation and fall apart when someone tries to build them are common, expensive, and avoidable. Our designers and engineers work in the same team, which mostly means the design gets challenged on feasibility while it is still cheap to change.

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Fixed-fee discovery · Research · Flows · Screens

Deliverables

What you actually receive

A design engagement ends with a package an engineer can build from without ringing anyone. Five layers, in this order.

What we learned

Findings from research, and the decisions they changed, written down so the reasoning travels with the screens.

The flows

How a person moves through the product to finish something, drawn end to end before any screen is polished.

The screens, every state

Not only the ideal path. Unstated states are where design and engineering fall out, so each one gets named.

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The rules

Spacing, type, colour and behaviour written as rules an engineer can follow without sitting beside the designer.

The words

Interface copy as it will ship, error messages and empty states included.

Fair question, 01

Want the design without the build?

Fine. The package is complete enough to hand to engineers who have never spoken to us, which is what the rules layer is for. Some clients take it in house, and nothing in how we work presumes we continue.

Fair question, 02

Is a redesign even the answer?

Occasionally not. When the problem is a broken flow, new screens repaint the breakage. Research settles which problem you have before anyone opens a design tool, and sometimes the honest recommendation is to stop where you are.

How the work runs

Three steps. The first one is the product.

Everything else on this site follows from these three steps.

  1. 01

    Discovery that ends in a written plan

    A short piece of paid work. We sit with the problem and you get back a document that says what is being made, how it fits together, what order it gets built in, and what it costs. The plan is yours unconditionally. Take it to us, take it to another firm, or decide not to build at all.

  2. 02

    A named team, and one person you can reach

    The people who understood the problem build the thing. You get names rather than a rotating cast, and one lead who answers to you directly. If someone is not working out, we raise it first and manage the replacement ourselves.

  3. 03

    Progress you can check, changes you can price

    Work arrives in increments you can see and use, not in a reveal at the end. When scope moves, and it will, the change is costed in writing before anybody starts it.

On this service

Discovery here means research before screens: who uses the product, what they are trying to finish, where they stall today. Design that skips it decorates guesses.

Ownership

What you own

From the first commit, everything belongs to you. Not at handover. From the beginning.

  • Code and repositories

    All of it, in accounts you control. There is no private framework underneath and no dependency on continued payment to keep the thing running.

  • Infrastructure and keys

    Cloud accounts, domains, credentials and certificates are created in your name. We hold nothing that you cannot revoke yourself.

  • Documentation

    Decisions, diagrams and runbooks are written while the work happens, so the knowledge leaves with the documents rather than with the people.

  • The freedom to leave

    If you stopped paying us tomorrow, the product would keep running without us. That is the test we design against.

Questions

Answered before you ask

What do we receive at the end?

Everything in the stack above: findings, flows, every screen in every state, the written rules, and the interface copy. Source files in whatever tool we designed in, organised so an engineer can find things without a guided tour.

How many revisions do we get?

A fixed number, agreed in the plan before work starts. Unlimited revisions is a promise nobody keeps, since somebody eventually pays for the extra rounds. A bounded number tends to be spent deliberately rather than hoarded for a fight.

Can you design without building?

Yes. The package stands on its own precisely so it can be handed to engineers who have never spoken to us. Some clients take it in house, and nothing in how we work presumes otherwise.

Do you do research with users?

When there are users to reach and the decision justifies it. Where access does not exist, we say so and design against the best evidence available instead of pretending interviews happened. Either way, what we learned is written down.

Next step

Tell us what needs designing.

Say what stage you are at. Research before screens is cheaper than research after them.

The design work

A few lines about the situation is plenty. We read every one.

No newsletter, no drip sequence. A reply from a person who read this.