We help clients design, integrate, and develop complex digital websites, applications, software, and intranets. Much as a building architect guides her client through the strategic planning and myriad decisions inherent to complex projects, TUG helps you realize your strategic goals.

We have developed a process for architecting digital places that meet today’s challenges. Complex digital initiatives must be planned and executed with a clear appreciation for what it takes to succeed in engaging people. TUG’s team of information architects have experience as business strategists, librarians, designers, educators, executives, solution architects, and more. We help organizations clarify and express their digital strategy, and then we architect digital places that bring that strategy to life. We are experts in helping you weave together your intertwingled systems and avoid the confusion and brokenness so often associated with digital transformation projects.

Good digital experiences depend on making the complex clear. When people engage with your digital place, they want to feel in control: To always know where they are, what they can do, and where they can go to do what they came to do. There are multiple forces at play that determine whether or not this happens. We can’t control those forces, but we must understand them if we are to succeed. Throughout our projects, clients can expect us to maintain a shared understanding of these key forces: business intent, operational context, and user needs.

To understand these forces, we iteratively employ a simple but powerful method—Observe > Model > Align—to make sense of complexity:

• Whether conducting a stakeholder interview or watching someone work with a prototype, our posture is one of observation with a beginner’s mind.

• We then create a model of what we think we observed.

• Finally, we collaborate with your team to ensure the model brings you closer in alignment. Then, as needed, we repeat the process again.

We Model to Make the Complex Clear

The maps and models TUG develops help organizations see what they’ve always seen, and yet never really understood. Not merely diagrams of the implementation of information systems, these models are visual explanations that make the complex clear. Over the course of a project, models will progress from a conceptual level to an increasing level of detail as we explore possibilities and then converge on a solution.

Refined over hundreds of projects, our PASS process (Program, Analysis, Synthesis, Sustain) works to align your team around the key questions of what needs to be done overall—before focusing on how it might be done. What we do is not unlike the stepwise progression people follow when they build or remodel buildings, moving from what to how: What do you want? What do you have? What do people do today? What should be better? What changes are required? How will it be built? How do you care for it? 

PASS Process

Program

In the Program strategy phase, understanding precedes action. TUG engages with stakeholders to clarify strategy and align on the reasons for change. Key questions answered at this point include: Why are we changing this place? Who is going to use this place? What needs to happen there? How will we measure success? How should we balance priorities? Clarity at the beginning of the project is attained through stakeholder alignment, strategy, and road-mapping.

Analysis

We then conduct an Analysis of the as-is environment around the problem, building maps and models to learn about the people, places, and processes that contribute to how things exist today. In this phase, we gather evidence from the digital and physical contexts where products and services are used and analyze it through activities including audits and system and business process mapping, clarifying “real-life” usage patterns through various forms of qualitative research and quantitative analysis.

Synthesis

In Synthesis, the TUG team takes what was learned in Analysis and ultimately creates an ideal way to arrange the information for successful outcomes. This process is iterative as we develop conceptual models and interface mock-ups that point toward a solution. We then work with you to elaborate and improve the concepts into testable constructs with real users. Using moderated and unmoderated testing procedures, prototypes are scenario-tested and iteratively improved. TUG then delivers a well-tested structural design specification that is aligned with organizational goals and strategies.

Sustain

Digital places are dynamic, so after the architecture is established we work with you to sustain and operationalize the new design. As needed, we equip the team building the solution with the specifications needed to turn the design into reality, including wireframe blueprints, agile backlogs, schematics, and taxonomies as needed. We also help develop the governance and content strategy needed to operate the systems.

Learn more about TUG’s PASS Process here: PASS Process →