On 2017

For the first six years of Miranj, Prateek and I were responsible for every activity under the sun. Whether it was designing and writing code, or responding to opportunities, or basic housekeeping (and everything in between) — the responsibility was always shared. The lack of separation of concern, and in turn a lack of ownership, meant that some aspects received disproportionately less attention than others. A business runs smoothly when things are fixed before they break, and this is as true for our core craft as it is for other facets such as generating opportunities, or general housekeeping.

2016 was a tough year overall. And it provoked some profound changes. In no other year have we evolved and achieved as much as in the year that just went by. This is the first time I felt like writing a year in review.

Segregated Responsibilities

We took cues from the year before, and made a bold move. Prateek and I split our responsibilities and took charge of different aspects of work. We both have different priorities now, which means fewer hurdles, more encouragement, and more motivation. As a result our progress last year has been more well-rounded than in any preceding year — be it clarity in objectives, leaner processes, generating new opportunities, better collaborations, and most of all, our work.

With a Clear Purpose

We had laid down our purpose back in 2016. Last year we had the opportunity to invest time and mind-space in reflecting on our values, strengths, and strategies, and to audit our performance. This self-analysis drove us to align our mindset and tactics to move closer to our purpose. We’ve made subtle changes in our conduct. To take an example, we’ve identified longevity as a core value in our work. We now consciously look ahead, well into the future, and take considered decisions at each step of planning and executing a project. We’re exploring questions like how long should a website last and even evaluate our client’s commitment towards this value. For a while we’d been posing four simple questions to understand new enquiries, but recently we’ve added a fifth question that seeks to understand the potential life-span of the website that we’re being asked to work on.

Project Workshops

We’ve started investing more in understanding a project, guiding clients and aligning expectations. For any typical project we now conduct a week-long project discovery workshop with our clients. We follow a methodical approach towards understanding the audience, content, and goals of the project, along with recognising the client’s taste in aesthetics. Further, we facilitate prioritisation, recommend a strategy, brainstorm a solution and mutually agree on the scope, and a plan of work.

This week-long intensive exercise has given tremendous clarity to our clients, helped us speed up alignment, and discover problems that are often overlooked by initial project briefs. It also serves as an opportunity to guide them — from design and technology to feedback and project management.

Raising the Quality of Work

We usually cringe when we look at our past work. But that’s also something that makes us proud. There’s probably no better evidence to indicate that we’re improving all the time. This year we’ve made some measurable improvements in our work. Our projects are faster, more secure, and implement better technical SEO. Some noteworthy changes that we’ve introduced are:

• hosting on VPS (such as Digital Ocean or Linode)
• ditching Apache and opting for an Nginx-only architecture
• deploying CloudFlare CDN to serve static assets
• inlining critical CSS
• micro-caching dynamic content using FastCGI Cache
• automating image optimisation
• serving all websites over HTTPs (including our own!), and
• delivering the most up to date technical SEO — from checking off all social media meta-tags to JSON-LD Struc­tured Data, using SEOmatic.

These qualitative improvements are now our ​“minimum deliverable” for every project we tackle.

Support Offerings

We finally got around to formalising our support offering. This includes essential housekeeping like monitoring server health, fixing issues, regular backups and timely updates (and renewals). Further, we now offer retainers which embrace the fact that websites are a living thing. We can help sites evolve over time and not let our client’s ideas (or needs) remain parked indefinitely.

New Geographies and Communities

We met more people from different parts of the globe than ever before. Our year started with a Singapore-based project, followed by attending Peers Conference in Seattle, and concluded with Dot All in Portland (the first Craft CMS conference). It’s been great to interact with these communities and learn from peers. It also helped us evaluate our own standing against the international web community in terms of skills, processes and quality of output.

Projects of Note

A year in review cannot be complete without touching upon some of the work we shipped. Here are three notable ones —

• Buuuk — Powerful page builder website for a bespoke mobile app design and development studio based in Singapore.
• Design Fabric — Lightning fast experience for a new publication on the art & design culture in India.
• Tiffinbox — #May1Reboot for a communication and illustration studio in New Delhi.

Our work page has more details on all three projects — Buuuk, Design Fabric and Tiffinbox. We can’t wait to announce some other projects that are yet to be launched publicly.

We’re super excited about 2018!

There are some interesting (and challenging) projects in the pipeline that will go live in the coming weeks and months. We’re gearing up to celebrate World IA Day 2018 next month. And we’re looking for an experienced web developer to join our team. We’ve laid out the offer very thoughtfully, and have meticulously put together a few rounds of evaluation to establish a good match. We’d really appreciate your help in recommending a suitable web developer to us. If the endorsed candidate is successfully hired we’ll be happy to share a referral fee of ₹10,000/- for your gesture.

If you’re facing any challenge in information architecture or content management, want to learn about our project workshops, would like us to speak at an event, or simply want to grab a coffee, email hidden; JavaScript is required.

Happy New Year!