Our Process

The PM will set up a formal kick-off meeting for your project. Normally, we like to meet face-to-face, but given recent public health concerns all of our meetings are being held remotely, for the time being.

The kick-off meeting ensures that everyone is on the same page, and allows us to learn about your organization in greater detail. So, we’ll ask you to come prepared to speak at length about your organization, goals, target audience and more.

To help spur this discussion, we’ll provide an extensive project questionnaire in advance. You won’t have to formally fill this out (although some do), it’s simply meant to prompt conversation.

Depending upon the specifics of your project, other discovery processes may take place, such as:

• Stakeholder, customer and/or client interviews
• Location walk-throughs and on-site visits
• Development of customer profiles/personas

Using the information we gather through these processes and the kick-off meeting, we’ll develop the foundational tools for the project.  These might include:

•  SITE MAP

  A visual architecture of all of the pages that will be on your website, along with page titles and organization.

•  MOOD BOARD

  To assist in design, we might construct a physical or virtual board of colors, contextual imagery and content to establish a mood for how we want users to feel when they interact with your site or application.

•  WIREFRAMES

  Line drawings of your website or application. These blueprints, delivered digitally, propose where content will go on a given page, how different processes interact, and what the user will experience.

•  USER TESTING

  We’ll recruit objective users to provide opinions on how well an existing product does or doesn’t work. We’ll then use that to inform how we build the new site or tool.

Setting a Project Schedule

During the planning phase, your PM will create a project schedule to which we’ll both be held accountable. The schedule will include timelines for the various project phases and the delivery of content.

We’ll typically use Teamwork to manage your project, but may also include Google Docs and Excel spreadsheets, depending upon project specifics.

Gathering Content

The production of content for your project – text, images, videos, logos and other content assets – is the most important factor in determining when your site or software will actually launch. Typically, content is the responsibility of the client, although we can provide writers and supporting team members if you need assistance. Your PM will work with you during the planning phase to set up a content delivery schedule. They will also provide a content grid, listing the specific content required for each website or application page.

How We’ll Communicate With You

We’ll make ourselves accessible to you and insist that you do the same. Nothing will delay a project more than either side “going dark.” Unless it’s a true emergency (app is crashing, site is down, etc), your PM will be available during the hours of 9-6 PM, Monday through Friday. Across the board, we try to respond as quickly as possible to project inquiries, but in certain cases may take up to 24 hours. But don’t worry, it will all get done.

Although many agencies these days use real-time chat tools like Slack, we find those to be too intrusive to orchestrate thoughtful, quality work, so we communicate through a combination of telephone, email and screenshare services like GotoMeeting.

We build your project on our own server and will provide you with a staging link to view progress. Each page will be built according to the sitemap and wireframes developed in the planning stage.

When we’ve finished coding every page of the product, we’ll add the content management system (CMS), if applicable, and populate the project with all of the content you’ve provided.