Lower the scope, not the quality

Most teams that go looking for a designer already know something is wrong. The donation form gets abandoned. Staff keep a spreadsheet next to the system they paid for. Customers phone to ask a question the website was supposed to answer. What they don't have is the budget for the thing they think comes next: a full redesign.

So they wait. Or they buy the redesign anyway, cheaper, and something quietly gets cut. Usually the research. Sometimes the testing. Almost always the check afterward to see whether any of it worked.

I'd rather cut the scope and keep the quality. Here's what that looks like.

A redesign is a bet on a diagnosis you haven't made

A full redesign assumes you know what's broken. Usually you know what people complain about. That isn't the same thing.

At LISC, the staff running a national anti-poverty program said their case-management software was in the way. The complaint was constant and unspecific: too many clicks, too much re-entry, nothing intuitive. Unspecific complaints don't get fixed.

So before any workshop, we ran a survey across the network. Thirty-nine people answered. Thirty-six named at least one challenge, and the top of the list was specific: 71.8% said too much manual data entry. Then we ranked each friction point by how much time it cost, not by how loudly people complained. Some of the things people were angriest about cost ninety seconds. Some quiet ones cost half an hour a day.

A plan sorted by heat would have spent the budget on the wrong things. That's the risk of redesigning before you diagnose. It's expensive in exactly the way a tight budget can't absorb.

Small pieces that stand on their own

My process has nine steps. Almost nobody needs all nine. Each step has its own inputs, its own result and its own hours, so you can hire me for one and stop there.

A few that do a lot for the money:

• A UX review. About eight hours. I work through your site or app the way your customers do, record the walkthrough, and hand you the top ten fixes ranked by impact and effort, plus an accessibility spot check against WCAG 2.2 AA. From $650.
• A usability test. Five people try one important task. We agree what "pass" means before anyone watches. You get task success, time on task, misclicks, and a change list in priority order. From $1,500.
• A problem-framing workshop. Half a day with everyone who has to say yes, and a one-page brief at the end that they've all agreed to. From $600.
• An after-launch check. A month after something ships, measure again and see what really changed. From $650.

None of these is a teaser for a bigger sale. Each one ends with something you can act on yourself, or hand to whoever builds your site.

What "smaller" should never mean

Smaller scope isn't a lower bar. A few things are the same on a $650 review as on a full project:

• The work is checked against real use. A review is me using your product the way a customer would, task by task, not a skim of the homepage.
• Accessibility is in it. WCAG 2.2 AA is the default, not an add-on. A visitor using a screen reader is a visitor.
• Every number traces to a source. If I can't show where a figure came from, it isn't in the report.
• I tell you what the smaller version trades away. If you're short on hours or budget, I'll scale a step down and say plainly what you're giving up, rather than skip the step.

That last one matters most. A five-person test won't give you a percentage you can take to a board. It will show you where people get stuck. Those are different jobs, and you should know which one you're paying for.

Start with the smallest useful piece

My work with Inglis, a disability-services organization, was an assessment first and a design second. I mapped the journey people take to reach its six programs, pressure-tested the map in workshops, and made recommendations. The wireframes for one new front door were the proposal. It was approved, and another team built it from those wireframes.

The assessment changed the plan before anyone spent money building the wrong thing. That's the whole argument for starting small.

Not every project is that size. The shape holds at any size, though: find out what's actually wrong, fix the part that matters most, check whether it worked. Then decide whether to keep going. You're allowed to stop after any step.

If you're not sure which piece you need, tell me where things stand. I'll point you to the smallest useful one, even if it isn't on my menu. Every order starts with a free 20-minute call, and nothing is charged until we've agreed the scope and price in writing.

If that sounds like your situation, let's talk.