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Define & Design

Define & Design

Created By: Joshua Bird

Define & Design is a key part of our methodology. We believe that solutions should be validated rather than arbitrary project goals, which means that we have to get to the core of what’s going on. We’re not just treating symptoms — we’re tracking down the root issue(s) and identifying potential cures.

So in many ways, the Define & Design period can be seen as a diagnostic test. But what does that practically look like?

Our Project Management and Design team engage our clients during this period gathering as much information as we can from your stakeholders and users. From this point, we can confidently define your needs and design a solution. During the design portion of this phase, we will explore your known visual style and brand identity into the digital product space.

The designs include a collection of screens that align with the approved application flow defined between your stakeholders and our team. These designs are then used as a starting point for writing user stories and acceptance criteria that will be ready for hand-off to the development team. The Development Phase offered by Umbrage can take from six to twelve weeks.

During this time, our combined teams will work as one cohesive force to produce:

Application Flow: A high-level schematic identifying current/future personas and the various journeys your user will take when engaging with your product.

Wireframes: Early into a D&D, our team will be taking initial features and feature sets and creating screen mockups so that we can begin seeing how a user might interact with the product  whether that is via web or mobile. The point is to identify optimum user paths and user experiences without the weight of having fully designed screens. Our focus is on the paths our personas will take, not the aesthetics.

Visual Design: Once we have buy-in on the flow of our wireframes, our combined team will begin putting color/paint and detail to the grayscale wireframes.

Product Guidebook: This is your blueprint. It is a living document that will be iterated on throughout the life of your product. It is where our backlog will reside and how our Product team, Development team, QA team, DevOps team and others will communicate for both current and future development.

So what happens next? After we deliver on our Define & Design contract, we set your team up for success. Handing over a six week product backlog, technical architecture diagrams, and designs, we prepare you for a development phase whether it be with Umbrage or anyone else of your choosing.


Check out our case study with Cold Bore.

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