UI/UX design
Most design doesn't fail in the design. It fails in the handover, where the beautiful file meets the loading state nobody drew.
The gap between the file and the thing
A design file shows an interface at rest, full of realistic data, with everything working.
The built product spends a great deal of its life in states nobody drew. Empty, because the user is new. Loading. Broken, because the request failed. Overflowing, because a real customer's company name is sixty characters. Half-filled, with three validation errors.
When designers and engineers are different companies, those states get invented during the build — quickly, inconsistently, by someone under deadline. It's the most common reason a shipped product looks worse than the pitch.
We design and build with the same two people, so the states get designed because we're the ones who'll have to implement them.
What we do
- User research
- Talking to the people who'll use it. Even six conversations reliably changes what you build, and it's cheaper than finding out post-launch.
- Information architecture
- What goes where, what's called what, and what a user has to hold in their head. Usually the highest-leverage part of the work and the least visible.
- Wireframes and prototypes
- Clickable early, so decisions get made against something people can use rather than something they have to imagine.
- Interface design
- The visual layer, including the unglamorous states: empty, loading, error, overflow, permission-denied.
- Design systems
- Components, tokens, and rules so the product stays coherent as it grows and as other people add to it.
- Accessibility review
- Contrast, keyboard navigation, screen reader behaviour, and focus order. Designed in, where it's cheap.
How we work
- We design in the browser early
- Static mockups conceal every problem that involves motion, real data, or a small screen. We get to something interactive quickly.
- We use your real content
- Lorem ipsum makes every layout look fine. Your actual product names, your actual error messages, and your longest customer name reveal what's actually going to break.
- We design the whole state machine
- Every screen has more than one state. We enumerate them rather than leaving the difficult ones to be improvised at build time.
- We say when it's expensive
- A design decision that adds three weeks of engineering should be a conscious trade, made with the cost visible. Being both the designer and the engineer means that conversation happens before the file is signed off.
Before you ask.
Yes. You'll get a full design system and a specification thorough enough for another team to implement, including the states that usually go missing.
Web App Development
Every web app is fast on day one. We build the kind that's still fast on day nine hundred.
Software DevelopmentMobile App Development
Most apps lose the majority of their users within a week of install. Almost none of that is about features.
Software DevelopmentSaaS Product Development
The feature you're excited about is the easy part. It's tenancy, billing, and permissions that decide whether this becomes a business.
Tell us what you're trying to build.
A 30-minute call, no charge and no pitch deck. Describe the problem and we'll tell you how we'd approach it, roughly what it costs, and whether we're the right team for it. If we're not, we'll say so.
30 minutes · No charge · No deck