Our Focus

Web Standards Development

We create quality front-end code for immediate integration into your application. We understand the software development process and know what to provide your team and where they'll need help. Styled, polished, commented, and well arranged code is our hallmark. View source on our current code to get the picture.

Web-standards saves real world dollars by reducing maintenance and upgrade costs over time. Imagine building for the future rather than for the past.

We make sites that display gracefully on mobile and tablet screen sizes using responsive design. We have an expert grasp on the techniques necessary to render your content appropriate for the device on which it's being viewed.

We hope smart people will be working on your project for years to come. That's why we build foundations using today's up-to-the-minute coding standards that others can quickly pick up from and move forward.

Your site achieves more speed and efficiency as browser technology evolves. Future adjustments to your site can focus on smart efficiency changes, and possibly some CSS evolution, rather than refactoring the fundamental structure and semantics of the code.

Present this argument to any good developer and they will know. Factoring forward, while using the latest support libraries (like Moderizer, jQuery) for compatibility represents the most efficient path for the effective management of your code-base over time. The hallmark of our presentation-layer code is this focus on modularity and shared responsibility.

User Experience Design & Planning

Our services are structured to:

Model information to support decision making
Research the goals, attitudes and aptitudes of potential users
Work closely with clients to structure achievable strategy and scope
Identify and model domain factors beyond physical users
Stay true to proven design processes, patterns and practices

Consider user experience design (UX) as consisting of three overlapping concerns: form, behavior, and content. An information architect concerns themselves with the structure of content but must address the behaviors that provide access to that content. A graphic artist may be concerned with form, but cannot succeed unless that form supports use. An interaction designer concerns themselves with behavior but must make behavior relate to form and content.

We provide the glue between these concerns, and represent this unity in the design of your product. Sometimes working technology isn't enough. Quality Interaction Design is a must. UX helps the users of a digital product fulfill their goals, and when people use products that meet their goals, they forget about products that don't.

We provide visibility into the relationship between form, behavior and content early in your planning process. Through research and interview we define behavior patterns — identifiable behaviors that help categorize modes of use of your existing or potential product.

If yours is a business or technical product, these patterns may map to job functions; for consumer products, they map to life-style choices. Behavioral patterns help us define Personas, which help us map your product to your audience. In the end, this deepens our understanding of the domain, your business goals, brand attributes, and technical constraints.

Overall, UX positions your digital product to succeed in exactly the ways others falter. Through formulaic analysis of your business problem, we're able to imagine solutions appropriate for your market. This differentiates good products.

Responsive Design

Using Responsive Design techniques, we address devices with varied screen sizes with only one set of CSS, segmented using Media Queries. Here are some key tenets of the approach:

Design on a flexible grid — size matters less, proportion matters more
Use flexible width images, let the browser resize them
Deliver bottom-up media queries to assure that content it's at is most usable regardless of screen size or device type.

We use HTML5 Boilerplate combined with Modernizr among other methods to assure support for Internet Explorer and modern web browsers like Safari, Chrome, Opera, or Firefox.

We have extensive knowledge of Webkit, the core of both Chrome and Safari (dominant on most smart phones) and we've used this knowledge to assure usability of web apps across smart phones of all types. This slideshare about a future friendly web sums up the approach more adroitly than I could babble on about it here.

Along side these methods, we use Jeremy Keith's mobile first approach to deliver only instructions that suit a device's capability. This results in increased performance and decreased latency across thin mobile networks. These techniques can be used with respect to the majority of the world that does not own a smart phone.

When you design using these methods, you eliminate the need for separate, mobile targeted content silos. It also decreases the TCO of your web product greatly over time. Think how much money you could save designing it right the first time.

Don't forget to drag the corner of your web browser around a bit. Resize your browser window or view our site directly on your mobile device to get a clear picture of responsive design.

Different Context requires Different Layout

Large Desktop
Average Desktop
Tablet Landscape
Portrait Tablet & Smartphone

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Interaction Design

We build highly functional web sites and web applications. We perform interaction planning, navigation design, and behavioral design for the actions users take when they use your software. Some of what we bring to Interaction Design efforts is outlined below:

Consistency in use of Design Patterns & Principals
Focus on form controls and input design using Formalize and other techniques.
Experience designing data output with large data sets
Familiarity with Section 508 Accessibility Guidelines
Advocacy for Mental Model Design

Our logical, simple design ethos yields highly efficient interfaces. We help clients achieve efficiency in their work force by creating interfaces that respect an employees use of time; This applies to consumers, too. People all over the internet are trying to get stuff done faster. This happens only when a trained interaction designer maps behaviors to goals using the user's Mental Model, rather than a programmer's Implementation Model. The difference is highlighted below.

We only create interactions that fit with what a user expects from and demands of the system. We pride ourselves on helping development teams realize what their audience, and project stakeholders require from the interactions within the app they are developing.

We create detailed interaction designs that describe form, behavior and content together before development gets underway. This cuts rework and use precious development cycles to create the right interface the first time.

We use wireframes, diagrams, and HTML5 prototyping to mock-up interactions that can receive the scrutiny and revisions of stakeholders outside of the confines of heavy-weight development. To save your IT department time, get in touch

15 Years working in professional IxD

Interaction Design (IxD) has been our primary focus for over 15 years. What you won't find is a group of print designers who translate "web" to mean graphic design. We design for the web first, and only. We believe that there's a big difference between agency provided "graphic arts" and designing behavior. If you do too, we'd like to hear from you.

We've designed for CRM, Workflow Management, Document Imaging, State & Local Government, and many more. IxD can play such a crucial role in the success or failure of a web product. We suggest you trust people who have a track record designing interactions in a simple and straight forward manner, regardless of challenge.

Business Problems with a Tech Component

Our approach puts understanding the business problem before anything else. We look at a problem using these activities:

Stakeholder Interviews
Modeling users attitudes & aptitudes
Requirements Definition
Framework: structure an electronic product that fits your budget and intent

There are many ways to solve the same problem. Choosing the right technology, people and approach is a job best left in the hands of professionals. We're here to advise C-level and Director level professionals in the process of creating technology. From selecting resources and technologies to creating architecture that's appropriate for your user base, we're familiar with the pit-falls and road-blocks that product development teams face.

Engage us to bring the insight that your team needs to create a successful digital product.