Service · Product consultation

Product Design and Consultation

Sharpen the bet before you spend the engineering quarter.

Before you build, get the strategy right. We help product teams find the right problem, frame the right bet, and design the smallest valuable slice to test it.

Engagement
Project · Retainer · Embedded
Cadence
Two-week shipping rhythm
Team
Senior engineers & designers
Source code
Yours from commit one
A deeper look

Everything to know about product consultation.

A long-form view of what this service line actually means in practice, written for the people who buy it and the people who will live inside the product after launch.

01

Product design and consultation before the build burns a quarter

Most products fail because they ship the wrong thing well. Product design and consultation exists to stop that from happening on your watch. Before you commit an engineering quarter, you should know which problem you are actually solving, who it is genuinely for, and what evidence would tell you that the bet is paying off. We work with product leaders, founders, and operators to sharpen all three. The output is a clear bet, the smallest valuable slice that can test it, and a written go or no-go you can take to your board without rephrasing later in the week.

02

Prototype sprints that test the risky parts first

We do not write fifty-slide strategy decks. We design and test the riskiest screens first, with real users, in two-to-three week prototype sprints. Opportunity solution trees, jobs-to-be-done interviews, and concept tests against working prototypes mean you find out whether the idea has legs before your engineering team builds it. When discovery says do not build this, that is one of the most valuable outcomes the engagement can give you. Killing a bad bet early saves quarters of work, and we will say it plainly when the evidence points that way.

03

Roadmaps your team can actually plan around

A roadmap that nobody trusts is just a wish list. Every product design and consultation engagement ends with a roadmap that maps cleanly to your team's actual capacity, ranked by impact and risk, with assumptions named in writing. We pair a senior strategist with a senior designer on every engagement so commercial intent and craft stay in the same conversation. We work alongside your product manager, not in place of them. Our job is to leave them with a sharper thesis, a defensible backlog, and a quarter they can plan with both confidence and humility.

Built for

Teams who recognise themselves here.

If one of these sounds like your situation, the rest of this page is calibrated for you. If none does, send a note anyway: we will tell you whether we are the right partner.

  • Audience

    Founders sitting on a bet they cannot yet articulate

  • Audience

    Product leaders deciding what their team should build next quarter

  • Audience

    Stakeholders weighing build, buy, or do-nothing

What you get

Outcomes, not deliverables.

We measure success in shipped value, not Jira tickets closed. Every engagement is anchored to a small number of outcomes both sides can defend.

  1. 01

    A crisp problem statement everyone on the team can repeat from memory

  2. 02

    An opportunity map ranked by impact and effort, with the riskiest assumptions surfaced

  3. 03

    A testable prototype of the smallest valuable slice, not a wishlist

  4. 04

    A go-to-market and metrics plan that connects design to revenue or retention

  5. 05

    A roadmap your engineering leads can actually plan a quarter around

What we deliver

Concrete artifacts, not slide decks.

These are the tangible things that land in your accounts at the end of an engagement. Everything lives in your repositories, your cloud, and your control from day one.

Ownership
  • Repositories, cloud, and domain stay yours
  • No proprietary tooling locks you in
  • Walk-away contract clause on every engagement
  1. Artifact

    A sharpened problem statement and target user definition

  2. Artifact

    A costed, prioritised feature backlog with risk ratings

  3. Artifact

    A clickable prototype of the riskiest screens

  4. Artifact

    A technology-choice memo with explicit trade-offs

  5. Artifact

    A written go/no-go recommendation

How we engage

Three shapes, one quality bar.

Match the engagement model to where your problem is today. The team, the cadence, and the standards do not change between shapes.

01 · Engagement

Project

Fixed scope · fixed price

Discover, design, build, launch, and hand over. One number, one date, one team accountable from kick-off to keys.

Best for: Clear brief, real deadline.

02 · Engagement

Retainer

Monthly · rolling backlog

A fixed senior allocation each month against a re-ranked backlog. Ship what matters every two weeks and review the plan together.

Best for: Priorities shift faster than annual plans.

03 · Engagement

Embedded

Per-engineer · monthly

We embed in your Slack, your repos, and your sprint board, on-camera daily, treated as your team for the duration.

Best for: In-house engineers who need senior horsepower.

Our process

Discover → Design → Build → Launch → Support.

The same playbook on every project. Boring, on purpose. Predictable, by design. The bead below traces the path we walk together, every time.

  1. 01Discover
  2. 02Design
  3. 03Build
  4. 04Launch
  5. 05Support
  1. 1

    Discover

    Stakeholder interviews, customer interviews, and a hard look at the numbers you already have.

    Phase 01 / 05
  2. 2

    Design

    Opportunity solution trees, prototype sprints, and concept tests with real users.

    Phase 02 / 05
  3. 3

    Build

    We pair with your team to ship the smallest experiment that proves or kills the idea.

    Phase 03 / 05
  4. 4

    Launch

    We help you instrument, segment, and read the data without lying to yourselves.

    Phase 04 / 05
  5. 5

    Support

    Quarterly product reviews: what to double down on, what to sunset, what to try next.

    Phase 05 / 05
Our toolkit

Pragmatic tools. Senior judgement.

The 10 tools below are the everyday kit our team reaches for on this service line. None of them are sacred; every choice is justified against the problem in front of us.

Quality bar
  • Type-safe end-to-end, lint and format on CI
  • Automated tests, monitoring, and runbooks
  • Infrastructure-as-code, reproducible builds
  • 01Miro
  • 02Figma
  • 03FigJam
  • 04Mixpanel
  • 05Amplitude
  • 06Notion
  • 07Productboard
  • 08Linear
  • 09Maze
  • 10Dovetail
Common questions

Things teams ask before signing.

Have a different one? Send a single email; we usually answer within a business day.

Are you product managers or designers?

We bring both. A product strategist and a senior designer pair on every engagement; strategy without design tends to ship slide decks, not products.

Do you replace our PM?

No. We work alongside your product team, not in place of it. Our job is to leave your PM with a clearer thesis and a roadmap they own.

How long is a typical engagement?

A focused discovery is four to six weeks. A prototype sprint is two to three. Long retainers usually run a quarter at a time, with a clear exit ramp.

What if discovery says 'do not build this'?

That is one of the most valuable outcomes we can give you. Killing a bad bet early saves quarters of engineering, and we will say so plainly when the evidence points that way.

Do you work with non-tech founders?

Often. We translate between commercial intent and technical reality, and we are happy to be your translator with the engineering team you eventually build.

Ready for product consultation?

Send the brief. We will take it from there.

Plain-English reply within one business day. NDA on request. Discovery call is free.