Today we launched Springboard, a fast-track programme of design and UX thinking for teams with big ideas but who are short on time or budget. I thought I'd write a quick post to shed some light on the thinking behind it.
For a while now, we've been considering whether we could offer a shortened version of our standard project discovery phase, but at a more affordable, fixed-price. From experience we've found that our full consultancy services aren't right for some clients due to budget or time constraints. Springboard offers them a low-risk way of kick-starting their ideas.
This discovery phase forms the first part of every client engagement at Clearleft. It's crucial to our process as it affords us the time to understand the client's domain, explore feasibility, expose opportunities and risks and nail down budgets. We then explore broadly, the IA, design and technology before committing to solving them in detail, during the main part of the project.
We felt that by compressing that process and adding some of the principles from the Lean start-up/Lean UX movements, the team could see real results quickly. By utilising our consultants as facilitators and getting the client team to undertake lots of the work themselves--guided by us of course--we can make it more accessible (we're aiming for ~£15,000) and as a bonus, the client would retain all the skills they've learned in-house.
So this is what we're offering; through a series of workshops, activities and collaborative sessions, we'll shepherd your team through the understanding, exploring and visioning phases, using the tried-and-tested techniques Clearleft have honed over years of client work. By the end of the programme your team should have a clearer vision of the product's future and have all the assets needed to move it onto the next phase--whether that's internally, with another partner, or continuing with us!
We see Springboard being useful for a number of client types:
- Early-stage startups that need UX and design-thinking to allow them to get their product to the next milestone
- Organisations that want to rapidly create a proof of concept or quickly get a handle on the size/complexity of a new internal project
- Groups working within industry sectors that don't usually bring user-centred, design thinking to their web-projects.
We are still nailing down the details and will run trials with trusted clients and friends before we launch the programme, but if you have any thoughts or suggestions, or would like to get involved, please get in touch at springboard@clearleft.com.
If you're interested in running this programme in your own company, please sign up at springboard.clearleft.com. We'll keep you updated and let you know when we're ready to launch.