Audit
What we do
Three ways to work with us.
An audit that ends in a document you can act on without us. A project with a fixed scope and a date. Or a retainer, if the work is never going to be finished.
Engagements
Which one you want.
The difference between these is not how good the work is. It is who carries the risk, how long you are committed and what you are holding at the end.
The question
Audit
Start here if unsure
Project
Most engagements
Retainer
Ongoing work
How long it runs
Two weeks
Three to nine months
Rolling quarterly
What you hold at the end
A written assessment
Working software or a shipped identity
Whatever shipped that quarter
How it is priced
info
Fixed fee
Fixed fee per phase
Monthly for a set capacity
Who from our side
A strategist and a designer
A full team
A named pair
Who from your side
Two hours of interviews
A decision-maker each week
A weekly half hour
Scope can change mid-flight
cancel
Not included
Between phases
Any week
Can be stopped early
No need
At any phase boundary
With a month of notice
Credited against later work
info
check_circle
Included
Not applicable
Not applicable
Audit
Start here if unsure
- How long it runs Two weeks
- What you hold at the end A written assessment
- How it is priced Fixed fee
- Who from our side A strategist and a designer
- Who from your side Two hours of interviews
- Scope can change mid-flight cancel
- Can be stopped early No need
- Credited against later work check_circle
Project
Most engagements
- How long it runs Three to nine months
- What you hold at the end Working software or a shipped identity
- How it is priced Fixed fee per phase
- Who from our side A full team
- Who from your side A decision-maker each week
- Scope can change mid-flight Between phases
- Can be stopped early At any phase boundary
- Credited against later work Not applicable
Retainer
Ongoing work
- How long it runs Rolling quarterly
- What you hold at the end Whatever shipped that quarter
- How it is priced Monthly for a set capacity
- Who from our side A named pair
- Who from your side A weekly half hour
- Scope can change mid-flight Any week
- Can be stopped early With a month of notice
- Credited against later work Not applicable
Strategy here means deciding what not to build. It is the shortest phase and the one that changes the budget most, because most of what a brief asks for turns out to be a symptom of two or three real problems underneath it.
What happens
- Interviews with the people who do the work, not only the people who commissioned it
- A read of what your customers already say in support tickets and sales calls
- A written position: who this is for, what it replaces, and what we are deliberately not doing
What you get
A document, a set of decisions with the reasoning attached, and a scope that survives contact with the budget.
Design covers identity and interface, and we do not separate them, because a brand that only exists in a guidelines PDF is a brand nobody has to follow. Whatever we design gets built by the people who designed it.
What happens
- Type, colour and layout set as tokens, not as a set of picture files
- Components designed against real content, including the longest name in your database
- Every state drawn: empty, loading, error, and the one where the customer typed something unexpected
What you get
A component library your team can extend, and guidelines written for the person at the sign shop as well as for a designer.
We build on the platform you are going to keep. That is usually HubSpot for marketing surfaces and something of your own for product, and we will tell you when a thing you asked us to build should not be custom at all.
What happens
- Front-end built from the same tokens the design uses, so the two cannot drift
- Content modelled so your team can edit it without a deploy
- Performance and accessibility checked on the pages that carry the traffic, not on a sample
What you get
Running software, the repository, and a handover session recorded so the person who joins next year can watch it.
1
Phase one — Assessment
Two weeks. Interviews, an audit of what exists, and a written position. Ends with a scope and a fee for phase two. If you stop here, the assessment is yours and it is useful on its own.
2
Phase two — Direction
Four to six weeks. Two or three routes explored properly rather than eight explored thinly, then one chosen with you in the room. Ends with the direction signed off and the build estimated.
3
Phase three — Production
Eight to twenty weeks depending on surface area. Design and build run together with a weekly demo of working software. You see it moving every week, not at the end.
4
Phase four — Handover
Two weeks. Documentation, a recorded walkthrough and a fortnight of your team driving while we watch. Ends when your team has shipped a change without us.
Recent work
Meridian Finance, from four identities to one.
A retail bank that had grown by acquisition, with four visual identities and a mortgage flow that asked for the same address twice. The audit found the brand problem and the product problem were the same problem, which changed what the project turned out to be.
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The audit told us the project we had budgeted for was the wrong project. That conversation was uncomfortable and it saved us two quarters.
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Phase gates meant we could have stopped three times and did not want to. That is a different feeling from being locked into a statement of work.
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Handover was two weeks of us driving while they watched. Our team has shipped everything since without calling them.
Audit
Not sure which one you need? Start with the audit.
The shortest way to find out which of the three shapes your problem needs.
Two weeks, one fixed fee credited against a project
- check_circle Interviews with the people who do the work
- check_circle A written assessment you can act on without us
- check_circle A scope and a fee for the phase that would follow
The fee comes off the first phase if a project starts within the quarter.
No. Everything is a fixed fee against a scope agreed before the phase starts. If a phase runs long because we misjudged it, that is ours to absorb.
Yes, and sometimes we will suggest it. What we will not do is design something and hand it to a team who was not in the room while it was decided, because that is where the work usually falls apart.
Then the useful shape is probably the audit or a retainer rather than a project. We have worked alongside in-house teams as an extra pair of hands and as the people who write the component library they then own.
No.
Usually a quarter for a project, and a fortnight for an audit. Ask on the call and we will tell you the real date rather than the hopeful one.
Nothing, unless you want it to. There is no support contract you have to buy to keep the work running, and there is no part of it that only we can change.
Open for work
Tell us what is not working.
Send the brief, or the mess that will become one. We will tell you which of the three shapes fits before we talk about money.
A reply within two working days from a person who read it
- check_circle We name the shape that fits before we name a number
- check_circle We say no when none of the three is right for you
- check_circle Nothing is quoted until the scope is written down
No deck required. A paragraph is enough to start.