A brief history about SDP
We'll tell you: it's our ability to connect the planning process all the way through to the resulting user experience. SDP has been the central planning and product definition hub for some of the largest and most complex projects online. Ultimately, this has led to a whole different kind of agency culture. Simply banging out seductive visual design doesn't count as a job well done here. Instead, everyone, from interaction designers and animators to developers, is accountable for actively connecting the various phases of our process. It's a process that fearlessly defines specific, measurable goals, and then secures that all subsequent design decisions address them.
In other words, we've built a mature product management culture here at SDP. We've learned that innovation comes from mastering organizational and technical constraints instead of ignoring them and from listening patiently to clients and digging deeper instead of clinging to our first few catchy ideas. We know we've only done our jobs when the projects we launch not only get talked about, but get our clients exactly the results they envisioned back in the planning phase.
It took a fair amount of persistence and flexibility to get our model right--not to mention finding enough talented people who wanted to collaborate this way--so we believe it makes SDP pretty different.
It took a fair amount of persistence and flexibility to get our model right--not to mention finding enough talented people who wanted to collaborate this way--so we believe it makes SDP pretty different.
Our processes
1. Discover
First, we listen to you. Successful engagements always involve clear communication and a deep understanding of the client's business situation. Then we study your customers, paying special attention not only to what they say, but what they do and where they click. All SDP designers are passionate observers of how real-life users interact with products and websites.2. Plan
Most likely your project has many important business goals, with various levels of priority and difficulty. SDP has been the central planning and product definition hub for some of the largest and most complex projects online. We'll carefully study your technical and content constraints, and help you rank everything into an actionable roadmap that can drive the design process.3. Invent
In this phase, solutions come into view. In essence, we take our detailed understanding of your customers and start solving their problems in a way that leverages the strengths of your business. We continue to discover fresh solutions as we define the conceptual design. The best answers are not always what we expected them to be.4. Define
Today, most websites resemble complex software products, and require painstaking definition before any development can realistically begin. We sometimes like to say "if the specifications aren't clear, the design doesn't exist."5. Build
Depending on the client's level of technical expertise and resources, our involvement in development can be minimal or comprehensive. In all cases, SDP delivers famously detailed and clear designs and specifications, and provides ongoing support for development. SDP's technical capabilities include client- and server-side development, e-commerce, content management systems, and CRM.6. Deploy
We make sure that designs are ready before they launch. All user testing, quality assurance, and reviews are conducted within SDP's testing environment, a site to which clients have access. When all development is complete, we work with the client's internal IT department to deploy and launch the site at a live production environment.7. Manage & Grow
It's not always possible, or smart, to do everything at once. We work with you to make changes that have the most effect first, and provide for how a solution may grow in the future. We also guide that growth, by continuously evaluating the effectiveness of designs and building on their successes, increasing your ROI.
