Product Development

Product Development

From drawing board to marketplace

Our experienced team will support your business from the initial brief or idea all the way through to launch and getting it into the hands of your users.

We use a six stage process that allows us to deliver rapid, effective and consistent results – because a good process does half the work.

This process begins by asking some obvious and (sometimes) difficult questions in order to provide a conceptual framework within which the project can evolve.  Each collaboration with a client is different but they all share the same robustness and transparency of approach.

1. Discovery

Ask the obvious questions

Begin the product development process by exploring the ‘what?’ ‘how?’ and ‘why?’ questions after which the core of the app will begin to emerge:

  • What will the app do?
  • How will it do this better?
  • Why will users use it?

Creating something your customers will love and use requires careful thought.  We use our discovery and storyboarding exercises to get your idea from initial concept into something tangible.

2. Prototype

Connect the first dots

Taking what we have discovered we create some crude scamps and then turn these into a lo-fi prototype focussing on the key parts of the user experience. These ‘mini-UX’ tests give us a first glimpse of whether our assumptions have been valid ones or not.

Will these features pass the ‘meaningful’ and ‘easy’ thresholds that will satisfy the user’s needs – in other words, as a user:

  1.   Do I understand what I am doing and why?
  2.   Do I find it it easy to do?

By creating something that behaves like the real thing (but without all the development headache) we remain agile and keep the momentum moving forward.

3. UX/UI Design

Users come first

User-centric design should be at at the forefront of any digital product development process.

Starting with a design and brand exploration process we will spark discussion by asking a range of questions from the practical ‘Do use a single typeface consistently in your communications?’ to the aspirational ‘Which brand—from any industry—do you admire the most from a visual point of view?’ to the rational ‘Which app do you consider to be well designed visually – ie. which communicate their objectives through their design?’

With the insights from this phase we will typically produce three design styles from which the final choice will be picked.

The designer and developer will work collaboratively to deliver beautifully crafted experiences and precise, user-friendly products.

4. Development

Our work is modular, transparent and fast. We maintain rigorous development standards and an agile workflow.

We mainly work in newer JavaScript frameworks such as Vue, React, Angular and Node coupled with Python or Django or if we’re going the native app route then Swift and Kotlin/Java.  But we are always keen to say “Hello, World!” in a new one….

Your project is securely managed in a cloud-based system and updated in real-time. It is always accessible, so you can check progress and give feedback 24/7.

5. Test

Finding bugs is the easy part

At the heart of our development culture are unit tests which provide the building blocks for full functional testing later on. During development we write unit tests and test iteratively and quickly so that we create the time to adapt and check new concepts in rapid succession.

We capture the findings of each test cycle and feed them into the next version which gets the product into users’ hands with the minimum fuss and the maximum utility.

Every project will have different testing requirements which will be documented in the Test Plan, but generally these are centred around functionality and compatibility testing supplemented by various additional checks such as security and performance testing or meeting a WCAG standard.

It also helps to record what will NOT be tested.  It’s not just about catching bugs…

6. Support

Your product will need TLC

Your product needs to grow and attract more users as well as stay ahead of changes in the environment which it inhabits, so whether it is OS updates from Apple, revised Play store rules or bug squishing we will help you maintain an optimal level of user experience.