How we work
The Life Cycle Process of Design & Development
As engineers, we follow a very structured design and development process based on the Spiral Model of Development coined by TRW software engineer and professor, Barry Boehm.
For smaller projects, we typically go through one iteration. However, during the design phase, it is not uncommon to present 1 to 3 initial designs and then iterate the refinement process another 2-3-4-5 times until our client is satisfied.
In general, we follow these primary steps in the design and development life cycle:
- Gather requirements (discovery)
- Confirm deliverables (contract negotiation)
- Design and development (production)
- Testing and quality assurance (QA)
- Delivery and launch
Discovery & Design
Since many people don’t know exactly what they want with regard to their new web design, we use a combination of methods and techniques to help guide you through the process:
- Discovery. First, we have a comprehensive discovery questionnaire that solicits your ideas, feelings, goals, objectives and preferences so that we have better guidance and direction in the early stages of concept development.
- Screenshot Database. Second, we have a database of 200+ screen shots representing a variety of web designs, styles, color schemes and genres. Using keyword and tags, we enable you to search our database of screen shots to allow you to identify your preferences.
- Choice of Designers. Finally, we offer a team of disparate designers who each take your discovery questionnaire into their own separate design lab and then produce a unique web design concept. We believe that by producing multiple, unique, distinct perspectives results in great options and depth. Based on these various design concepts, we often produce a series of design iterations, based on your feedback, to refine our concepts into a winning design.
Time line and turn-around
A clean and simple website can be delivered in as little as 3-6 weeks if you know exactly what you want and are decisive and timely with decisions. The fewer the number of decision makers, the faster we can get through this process.
Indeed, most delays in production and development are a result of our client’s inability to make efficient decisions or a delay in getting content and feedback to us. Moreover, decisions by committee often end up in a state of analysis paralysis where a 6 week project often ends up taking 6 months. If you want a site delivered fast, we need fast response and all materials delivered as soon as possible. We also recommend a single point of contact and decision maker.
Complex web applications and projects should be broken down into manageable phases where deliveries include fully functional modules. Enterprise-level projects can take anywhere from 6-18 months.
Rates and Payments
Our design, development, photography and seo consulting rate is $85/hour, which happens to be the same rate that I pay my bicycle mechanic and my daughter’s gymnastics coach for their hourly rates. To put things into even better perspective, my motorcycle mechanic charges $95/hour and my car mechanic charges $98/hour.
However, in a way, hourly rates mean nothing. We could charge $10/hour for example and take 10 hours to complete a task or charge $100/hour and take 1 hour to complete a task. They both result in an invoice of $100. So, in some ways, we prefer to work by the project because we are results oriented.
If you believe that the scope may creep over time and your requirements are fluid or if we are unsure of the black box that we are about to open then an hourly rate is more appropriate.
In the end, we want what you want … we want to deliver websites quickly and efficiently. We want our customers thrilled with the results so they can spread the word and tell everybody they know how great we are and fun to work with.
For projects less than $4,000 and duration time less than 8 weeks, we require full payment in advance. Block of time may be purchased in advance for web maintenance and management tasks. We accept check and credit card and use both Google Checkout and PayPal to accept online payments.