Whether you already have a clear idea or just a vague notion of your project: You can hire us to shape, design, build and maintain digital projects. We’ll be your sparring partner and guide throughout the whole process.
Digital projects—from idea to production
Note: We’ll expand this into a more structured / designed page at some point, but we wanted to share the text already, so consider this to be the MVP version.
We’re a small but highly competent team with many years of experience, having worked with clients big and small in a wide range of industries and contexts. Elsewhere our field of expertise might be called digital products and services, but we prefer digital infrastructure, thereby emphasizing our responsibility as designers and builders, and our commitment to accessibility, safety, data security and long-term maintenance.
Our unique cooperative structure means you’ll always be working with an owner of our company, leading to high commitment and quick decision-making.
What we can do together
Here are some things we’re good at, given our team’s expertise in design research, visual and interaction design, design systems, front-end and back-end development, as well as product ownership:
- Digital strategy, research and prototyping
- Branding and design systems
- Digital products, platforms and infrastructure
- Custom website design and development
- Technical consulting and audits
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Digital strategy, research and prototyping
Throw us your product idea, and we can evaluate how to build a prototype quickly, gather feedback and validate its viability. We consider your organization's context, assess people’s needs and do the research required to get the project off the ground.
Digital branding and design systems
Need a re-focusing of your values/mission or a refreshed visual representation? We can guide you, creating an inventory of current touchpoints and leveling up your visual appearance. We always think in modular systems, from print to digital, to presentations, to social media.
Digital products, platforms and infrastructure
We create tooling, apps and infrastructure; based on entirely custom implementation or integrating low/no-code tools, depending on context and requirements. We prioritize people’s safety and data privacy, designing and building from a people-centric perspective.
Custom website design and development
We create extendable, fast and accessible websites that work on every device and stand the test of time, backed by an easy-to-use content management system that keeps your stuff modular and reusable. We focus on visual clarity, custom presentation and maintainability over the long term.
Technical consulting and audits
We can help you choose the right tech stack for your project or provide an outside perspective on accessibility or performance of your existing site/app.
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How we approach this work
We are a team with broad expertise, bringing designers, developers and researchers together. Therefore you get the most bang for your buck if you hire us for all these disciplines at once, e.g. seeing a website through its concept phase and then designing/building it together. We prefer long-running projects into which we can pour all our skills.
That said, hiring us for slices of this process is also possible, e.g. when you have a design ready and only need the programming part. We approach each project with a people-centric mindset from a feminist perspective of inclusion, safety and accessibility.
Our process is pragmatic, agile and iterative, with the explicit goal to establish feedback loops early, asking questions such as: What’s the smallest version of this idea we can create? Can we validate our hypotheses with a prototype? Is there a simpler solution to this problem? What even is the problem we’re trying to solve? Can we get feedback from real people on this?
We like to form one project team with our clients: We join your communication tools to work as closely together as possible: You bring the domain expertise, and we bring the design and technical perspective. We can’t do this work in isolation, meaning we need you as an active participant in the process.
We can do a lot, but not everything, everywhere, all at once
We usually focus on product direction, digital branding, interaction design and implementation for the web. For e.g. native apps, social media marketing or advertising, we like to work with specialists from our network. Meaning: We can still steer the project, be your point of contact, and make sure our work connects well to those other fields, but we leave the execution to people who know exactly what they’re doing. It’s important to us, to be honest about that.
What does this cost?
Our day rate is usually 1000€ per person, regardless of discipline. If this sounds high: Consider that a day rate alone doesn’t tell you much—with our hands-on approach, experienced team and integrated process, we get loads done quickly. If you hire somebody with half our day rate, but the project takes twice as long, you’ve spent the same money and wasted a lot of time.
We’ll likely ask you about your project budget in our first call together. That may feel odd, but we do it because it helps us understand your appetite: Digital projects are always malleable. You can usually create some version of every project on almost much every budget, so knowing your budget makes it easier for us to scope out a tailor-made package. This also saves us both from the awkward dance of a shot-in-the-dark proposal not matching your budget. Let’s talk about money early and openly!
Commitment issues? We’re always happy to create small “test-drive” projects where we isolate a small chunk of work and tackle that together, reducing the risk of committing to a large scope and budget. Ultimately, you have a tangible result and can decide to continue working with us or take your work elsewhere. No hard feelings!
Will I forever depend on you? Am I selling my soul?
First, our work comes with a responsibility to maintain it—we’ll be by your side for as long as you want us to be. You should come back to us for more work because you value our contributions, not because we hold your project hostage.
Our explicit long-term goal is to empower your team and to make ourselves redundant: Digital infrastructure is crucial to your organization, so you should own it, from the domains to the hosting, to the software licenses, to the code. If you have your own designers and/or developers, we’ll happily share our knowledge with them so they can take over where we left off. We can even help you build your own team and onboard them.
When can we start?
We’re a small team, and we honor our commitment to existing clients. We don’t over-commit, therefore “Can we start next week?” or “Launch is in a month!” usually doesn’t work for us. Maybe reconsider whether the urgency is actually warranted.
Ready for the first step?
Send us an email, and we’ll take it from there. General inquiries go to hello@village.one, but if you’ve got a project with a strong focus on one area of expertise, you can also contact all our people directly: