Design

TL;DR

Before any code, a rough sketch of the solution is shaped into a pitch with a fixed appetite, a list of rabbit holes, and a list of no-gos. The pitch is the contract the team builds against.

What this is

Design is the loop that fits the solution to the people using it and the team building it. The output is small, sharp, and ready to build — not polished mockups.

The framing comes from two sources. The UK Design Council’s Double Diamond models the second diamond as a diverge-converge: develop different answers, then deliver what works. Shape Up by Ryan Singer tightens that loop: shape the work into a pitch with fixed time and variable scope, bet on it, then build.

I take the convergent half of the Double Diamond (“Develop” + “Deliver”) and use Shape Up’s shaping discipline to make it cheap to run on a solo engagement.

What happens

• Set the appetite first. Time, not estimate. “Six weeks” or “two weeks” — not “should take four weeks if everything goes well.” Fixed time forces trade-offs.
• Find the elements, not the screens. Fat marker sketches and breadboards — UI concepts that define affordances and their connections without visual styling. Words are too abstract, wireframes are too concrete, sketches land in the middle.
• Surface the rabbit holes. Parts of the project that are too unknown or too complex to bet on. Either spike them, declare them out of bounds, or cut back.
• Write the pitch. A one-pager with five ingredients: Problem, Appetite, Solution (with sketches), Rabbit Holes, No-Gos. The No-Gos list is what makes the pitch a real contract.
• Get one piece done before the rest. In Shape Up terms: integrate one slice end-to-end before chasing the next one. The point is to find the unblockable unknowns early, not to build the whole UI.

What you get

• A pitch document the team can argue about in plain language, before any code is written.
• A small batch of fat marker sketches and breadboards — low-fidelity artifacts that make disagreement cheap.
• A list of rabbit holes with a plan for each: spike, bound, or cut.
• A clear definition of done that includes “deployed” — not “coded and demoed”.

Cadence

• First two weeks: most of the design happens before any code, to give delivery a clear runway. Shape Up’s six-week cycle compresses to two or three weeks on a solo engagement, with the same internal rhythm: shape, bet, build.
• Steady state: 1–3 hour slices two or three times a week. Most weeks, the design loop returns for a single feature between builds.
• Anything bigger than a half-day of design work breaks into smaller questions first. If the pitch can’t fit on a page, the appetite is wrong.

What I need from you

• One person on your team to react to sketches the same day — fast, blunt feedback is the point.
• Permission to use whatever tool the team already lives in, even if it is messy.
• A short answer to “what would make this version obviously worth shipping?” before each new design slice.

What comes next

A sharp design hands off to DevOps. Design does not stop — it returns for the next slice as soon as the current one has shipped behind a flag.

If this is the kind of help you need, the next step is a 30-minute call.