Our Approach
As a human-centred design agency, the way we work combines proven, accredited, repeatable process underpinned by our commitment to being collaborative, flexible and transparent in everything we do.
The Cyber-Duck Way
Every project is unique. But reinventing the wheel for each project can result in scope creep, and user experience and QA issues. Instead, we’ve taken nearly 20 years’ commitment to continual improvement to identify key replicable ‘building blocks’ across strategy, design, content, data and technology delivery. We call it The Cyber-Duck Way.
It includes ISO-accredited processes and models for service blueprinting, UX and UI design, content strategy, data architecture and more besides. With guides for technical delivery, right down to how we manage releases and deployments. All underpinned by best practice in accessibility, security, sustainability and Lean and Agile principles.
This flexible, yet structured, and collaborative approach frees us to spend our time – and your budget – on delivering added value. Adapting to your organisation’s unique challenges and culture, whatever your sector, industry or project type.
Defining business & user requirements
Whether it’s for a new web application or content platform, a website consolidation or large-scale service and system transformation project, all require a deep understanding of the wider business requirements and user needs: customers, team members, suppliers and other stakeholders.
The structured approach below enables us to define and map out the ‘as-is’ and desired ‘to be’ states, setting out a project scope and strategic direction able to deliver on your organisation’s future goals and KPIs.
Understand the brief/scope
- Review project proposal
- Round table meeting
Ignition
- Project initiation document
- Planning and resourcing
- Ignition meeting
Share and Agree
- Client onboarding & kick-off
Immersion
- Examine any existing research
- Evaluate existing website
- Evaluate brand guidelines
- Evaluate content & SEO
- Evaluate performance
- Evaluate accessibility
- Technical Discovery
- Technical Audit
Discovery guides action
Whether it’s for a new web application or content platform, a website consolidation or large-scale service and system transformation project, all require a deep understanding of the wider business requirements and user needs: customers, team members, suppliers and other stakeholders.
The structured approach below enables us to define and map out the ‘as-is’ and desired ‘to be’ states, setting out a project scope and strategic direction able to deliver on your organisation’s future goals and KPIs.
UX Kick-off Workshop
- Goals and Risks
- Playback scope and approach
- Personas
- Assessing current offering
Stakeholder Interviews
- In-depth interviews
- Focus on specific expertise
- Scope health check-up
Desk Research
- UX audit
- Content, analytics & SEO audit
- Performance audit
- Accessibility audit
- Features audit
- Landscape analysis
- Benchmarking
User Research
- Affinity mapping
Analyse
- Survey analysis
- Thematic analysis
Synthesise
- Word clouds reports
- Typeform presentations
Service Blue Prints
- User Journeys
- Detailed diagrams
Product Management
- Product vision
- Roadmap creation & review
- Ongoing delivery plan & strategy
- Project Delivery Document
- Backlog management
- Feature list and prioritisation
- Ongoing scope health-check
- Delivery team recurring sessions
Design becomes reality
From the theory starts to emerge practice. Taking insights, strategies and journey maps to create the foundations for robust and life-enhancing services, products and experiences. There are processes and templates to design the product and service capabilities to cater for brand activation, content production, technical infrastructure, code development, data design. All of which are carried through into protypes robustly tested through QA and against accessibility, sustainability, security and other compliance standards.
Personas & User Journeys
- Mapping users
- Personas
- Journey mapping
Content
- Content strategy
- Content mapping
- Content creation
Information Architecture
- Sitemap
- Tree testing
Concepts
- High-level illustration of core concept
- Visualise the discovery phase
Wireframes
- Wireframes
- Design iteration
Prototypes
- Prototyping
- Usability testing
- Populate content
- Search functionality
- Design > dev weekly sessions
Accessibility
- Accessibility check
Design Rollout
- Responsive designs (mobile & tablet)
- Design system/ style guide
- Component matrix
- Design iteration
Deliver high quality with ease
While our developers are involved throughout, from client onboarding to design, here’s where they, and our data, engineering and DevOps experts, really come to the forefront. Working in full, transparent partnership with clients and Product Owners, we build on pragmatic Lean and Agile methods to ensure everything is deployed, tested, quality assured and launched, on time and on budget.
UX Handover
- Wireframes handover
- Creative checklist
- User stories handovers
- Internal handover presentation
Design Handover
- Art direction handover
- Brand guidelines handover
- Design matrix handover
GDS Assessments
- Final delivery
Planning & Requirements
- Backlog management: Epics & User Stories
- Acceptance Criteria
- Team estimation
- Release planning
- Business & technical requirements
Documentation
- Functional specifications
- Epic documentation
- Systems specification
- Integrations specifications
Acceptance Criteria
- Define boundaries of the user stories
Build
- Sprint Zero
- Scope health check-up
- Roadmap review
- Deployment pipelines
- Infrastructure design & build
- Analytics tracking
Build Cycle
- Sprint Planning
- Dev > design recurring sessions
- Ongoing standups
- Sprint Review
- Deployment
- Sprint Retrospective
- Sprint Report
Testing
- Test automation
- Manual testing
- Performance testing
- Performance testing
- Accessibility testing
Quality Assurance
- Testing strategy
- Regression test plan
- Content & SEO review
- Peer-Review
- Task evidence
- Ongoing demo
- Go/no-go meeting
Driven for success
Often when a service, application or product is launched, it’s easy to think all the hard work is done. But the wider technology landscape and business realities never stop moving forward, not to mention the accrual of technical debt. To ensure what we do performs for the long-run, we have robust templates around both reporting and strategic thinking, covering to content strategy, DevOps, SEO and conversion rate optimisation, as well as code and infrastructure improvement.
Post launch review
- Client satisfaction survey
- Handover to client services
- Hand off tasks
Client Relationship Management
- Future roadmap
- Monthly account meeting
- Quarterly business review
Retainers
- Retainer implementation
Optimisation
- Performance & analytics testing
- Performance Monitoring
- Content performance review
Marketing support
- Awards consideration
- Create social case studies
Monitoring
- Service monitoring
- Incident management
- Reporting dashboard
- Application error monitoring
- Security update monitoring
- 24h support
How we work, together
We’re here to make change happen, with a culture that’s all about working in partnership and empowering your team with the experience, process and tools to deliver above and beyond.
People-first
We give you a single point of contact, provide training and a team that embeds into yours.
Transparent
You’ll always know where you stand. Digital collaboration tools, budget reports and daily standups show you the status of each task at any time.
Collaborative
We find the best way to work with you, simplify communication and get things done.
The team guided and supported us every step of the way, bringing a wealth of knowledge and skill into every conversation. We now have a website that truly reflects the Sport England of today.
Head of Editorial and Content, Sport England
We're accredited
The Cyber-Duck Way’s flexible, robust approach is underpinned by six independent global standards, with numerous other leading certifications. All chosen to deliver on our commitment to consistently deliver human-centred, accessible, sustainable, secure and high-performing work.
An Agile culture
Agile puts people first and embraces collaboration and iteration. It de-risks work, clarifies needs and outcomes and its flexibility cuts time, cost and effort— able to deliver minimum viable products earlier and maximise ROI. Even if we're following a different delivery model, our Agile culture builds an empowered, cohesive team that drives results.
Working in partnership
The Cyber-Duck Way's flexible, structured approach enables us to easily identify what resources and requirements any projects need, both internally and externally. And if necessary, we bring in best of class partnerships to ensure delivery excellence.
