Design culture
At Infinity Works, we believe in the power of design to deliver value for organisations, effect strategic change, and improve people's lives. We view design as a way of humanising technology, of understanding complexity, of shaping culture, and of problem-solving. All of which require a deep understanding of the problem space and, most importantly, people. This document describes our services, ways of working, principles, and tools.
Services
Customer experience strategy
Helping organisations to shape a vision for their customer experience and create a clear, measurable plan that catalyses change and delivers outcomes.
Service design
Taking a human-centred, collaborative approach to designing services. We join the dots between customer touch-points and organisation operations to optimise the experience and deliver efficiencies.
Interaction design
Crafting intuitive experiences that elevate brands, drive conversions and breed advocacy. We work iteratively and openly, designing for a diverse range of users, platforms and environments.
User research
Guiding innovation by developing a deep and shared understanding of users through qualitative and quantitative methods. We continuously assess how products and services perform against user expectations, allowing teams to course-correct and reduce risk.
Ways of working
Full stack
Like our engineering counterparts, we develop and hire designers who can work across service, user experience, and digital design with a solid understanding of front-end development and user research. We expect the same of researchers, favouring those who can apply their skills to user research, market research, and data analysis.
Embedded
Designers and researchers are fully embedded within our multidisciplinary delivery teams, working side-by-side with engineers and product people.
Continuous learning
Whether a product or service is in a discovery, alpha, beta, or lights-on phase, we continue to learn, experiment, and optimise.
Open
We work in the open: sharing our insights, work-in-progress, and outputs with the rest of the team.
Lean
We do more with less, creating the maximum amount of value for our clients and their users with the least amount of effort. This doesn't mean cutting corners or being untidy.
Principles
The three F's
- Fit: Does the product or service meet user needs? Does it fit the market? Does it move our clients towards their goals?
- Function: Does it function as expected? Does is have the correct affordances? Is it intuitive? Is it forgiving? Does it fit the user's mental model?
- Feel: Do people actuallywant to use it? Is it an ambassador for the brand? Does it connect with the user emotionally?
Design for everyone
We ensure that the things we design work for everyone, regardless of their barriers. Designing for the edges makes products and services better.
10x, not 10% better
Our goal is to make things 10x, not 10% better. This requires optimising beyond the local maxima, thinking systematically and knowing what outcomes you're trying to achieve.
Systems, not pages
As well as thinking systematically, we design systematically. This creates the opportunity for reuse, minimises effort, and instils consistency. This doesn't mean being uniform.
Pragmatism
No engagement or team is the same, each comes with its own constraints, challenges and opportunities. We adapt accordingly, work hard to understand our environment and let our methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances.
Health check
To understand whether your team is in good shape, try asking these questions:
- How well does the team know the users and what they need?
- Is the work visible? Can everyone in the team, including designers and researchers, point at the thing they're working on and how it's progressing?
- How many days has it been since the team last spoke to a user?
- What percentage of the team, including engineers, has been involved in user research?
- Is the team measuring the impact their design is having?
- Does the design team have a view of the roadmap?
Tools
We don't prescribe the use of particular tools. We trust our consultants to pick technology based on the requirements of the client, product, and project. We do, however, have company licences for the following:
- Adobe Creative Cloud
- Framer X
These can be requested using /halp in our Infinity Works Slack space.