UI/UX & Software Design Services
Design is where a product becomes cheap or expensive. A decision made in a wireframe costs an afternoon; the same decision made after the build costs a sprint and a difficult conversation. We resolve them early, in the open, with the people who will actually use the software.
Software & UI/UX Design done properly.
Three layers, delivered as one system rather than a folder of screens.
- Solution Design
The unglamorous first pass: who the software is for, what it has to do, which decisions are still open, and what is deliberately out of scope. It is what stops a build starting on top of unresolved questions.
- Creative Design
A visual system rather than a set of screens — type scale, colour, spacing, iconography and every state — so the twentieth screen looks like it belongs with the first, including screens designed after we have left.
- Interactive / UX Design
Prototypes of the journeys that carry the business, put in front of real users. Empty states, errors, loading and the long-tail paths get designed too, because those are exactly where products feel unfinished.
Where this usually goes wrong.
Named up front, because avoiding them is most of the value.
- Screens without a system
A file full of beautiful artboards with no tokens, states or rules produces inconsistent build and a steady drip of clarification questions for the rest of the project.
- Happy path only
Designs that cover the ideal case leave engineers inventing error, empty and loading states at build time — which is why the finished product looks like several different people made it.
- Tested on the team that made it
Internal review reliably confirms what the team already believes. Five people from outside it will tell you something you did not want to hear, which is the entire value.
- Accessibility as a later pass
Contrast, focus order, target size and labelling are cheap in design and expensive as remediation — and increasingly a procurement requirement rather than a nicety.
The engagement, phase by phase.
Every phase is run by senior engineers and ends in something you can see.
Requirements and scope
Who, what, when, where, why and how — captured as decisions, with the still-open questions listed rather than glossed over.
Information architecture
Structure, navigation and the mental model users will form, agreed before anyone draws a screen.
Wireframes
Low-fidelity flows for the paths that matter, cheap enough to throw away — which is exactly what makes them worth doing.
Visual system
Type, colour, spacing, components and states defined as a system your engineers can implement and your team can extend without us.
Prototype and test
Clickable journeys in front of real users, with findings written up as specific changes rather than as opinions or a satisfaction score.
Handover to build
Specifications, tokens, assets and states delivered so engineering builds from settled decisions — and we stay reachable while they do.
Shipped, and still running today.
Design work that shipped and is still in front of users.
- eLaundry →
The design system and the end-user flows, from pickup booking through to delivery, built for clarity on a small screen.
- Inverge Journals →
A branded theme and ten maintained policy pages, so a small editorial team can run a journal with no back office behind them.
What we build it with.
Chosen per project, and for what your team can maintain afterwards.
Questions we get asked.
Can you design something without building it?
Yes. Design is a standalone engagement, and you leave with a system your own engineers or another vendor can build from — specifications, tokens, assets and documented states. We would rather hand over something genuinely buildable than make the design depend on hiring us for the build.
We already have a brand. Do you work within it?
Yes, and it usually saves time. Brand guidelines give us type, colour and tone. What is normally missing is the product layer — components, states, density, interaction rules — and that is what we add on top without contradicting what marketing is already using.
How do you test designs?
Prototypes in front of people who resemble your actual users, on the journeys that carry the business, before anything is built. Findings come back as specific changes with the reasoning attached. Our post on improving UX describes the approach.
Do you handle accessibility?
It is designed in rather than audited afterwards. Contrast ratios, focus order, target sizes, labelling and keyboard paths are part of the system. That is far cheaper than remediating a built product, and it is often now a procurement requirement.
What do we actually receive?
Flows, wireframes, a visual system with tokens and components, prototypes of the key journeys, and specifications covering the states an engineer would otherwise have to invent. All of it is yours to keep and extend.
Can you redesign an existing product without a rewrite?
Usually. It starts by mapping what the product does today and where users are struggling, then staging the change so improvements ship incrementally instead of hiding behind one high-risk relaunch.
Further reading.
What we have written about software & ui/ux design and the decisions around it.
- 5 steps to improve your user experience →
Five concrete steps to improve the user experience of your website, aimed at product teams shipping web apps that need to convert and retain.
- Building a design system for scale →
How to build a design system that scales with a small team: tokens, components, documentation, and the governance that stops it rotting after launch.
- Mobile-first design: why and how →
Why mobile-first design matters and how to do it properly, including the team conversations that need to happen before a single screen is sketched.
Other services.
- IoT Software Development →
Connectivity, telemetry, device management and dashboards for connected products — with the update path designed in from the start.
- Support & Project Rescue →
A technical audit, a plan to stabilise what exists, and ongoing support once the codebase is trustworthy again.
- Cloud Computing →
Infrastructure sized for the traffic you actually expect, and applications built to scale without a rewrite.