Design Services

Before leaping to solutions, we examine quantitative data to uncover “what is happening,” and examine qualitative data to discover “why it’s happening”. As part of our design process we also ask: “who is it happening to?” We build personas, which are simplified customer profiles, to help focus our design solutions on their goals, and not ours.

Don’t fall in love with the first idea — scenarios should be plural. The first solution usually brings relief, but the second, third, fourth etc bring confidence and intentionality. We ideate several possible scenarios to release us from the tyranny of the sunk cost fallacy. We create storyboards and user pathways by reverse engineering the problems defined during the research and analysis phases.

In this stage, we document design rationale: think of Hansel & Gretel leaving (inedible) breadcrumbs to avoid getting lost in a gnarly digital forest. This makes the overall goal clear, and creates a reference point for subsequent decisions and changes.

We believe in fast prototyping. The best creative projects always start in low fidelity. Think Leonardo’s rough sketches, business models drawn on napkins. The best work starts out very rough, be it paper prototypes, interaction studies, or information architecture blueprints — the rougher it is, the faster, more flexible and cheaper it is to iterate. Low fidelity allows us to work out the bugs, missed assumptions and bad thinking before we start visual design or write a line of code. From there we gradually increase the fidelity of the visual design and start iterating in code.

Because of the proliferation of digital devices, designers create digital systems that are robust, flexible and responsive to different mediums.