# How We Work, Graphic House

> A five-stage process from discovery through to post-launch review, with the strategy and structure agreed before any design work begins.

Canonical URL: https://graphichouse.ie/studio/how-we-work/

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How we work Understanding the problem before designing anything.
Most of the risk in a website project sits in the first two weeks, when everyone agrees on a brief that turns out to describe the wrong problem. The process below front-loads that, and nothing is designed until the thinking is signed off.
Plan the engagement Review the portfolio
Working system
Four connected decision points
Working system The work moves through decisions, not departments.
01 Frame the condition
Leadership context, customer evidence and operating constraints become one decision brief.
02 Make the system visible
Position, content, journeys and technical choices are reviewed as connected parts.
03 Review at decision points
Senior review stays close when the work reaches trade-offs, not only presentations.
04 Leave an operable standard
The client team receives a system it can understand, govern and improve.
Our process
Five stages. Nothing is designed until the structure is agreed, which is the step most projects skip and later pay for.
01 Discovery
Interviews with you and with the people who sell or deliver day to day. This is also where we look at whatever analytics and enquiry data exists.
02 Structure and strategy
You get a written view of who the site is for, what it needs to say and how it is organised. Nothing gets designed until that is agreed.
03 Design and writing
Pages are designed and written at the same time. You review real pages with real copy rather than mood boards, which makes the feedback far more useful.
04 Build and launch
Development, testing across devices and assistive technology, content migration and launch. Your team gets training before handover, not a PDF afterwards.
05 After launch
A few weeks of monitoring once real traffic arrives, then a short written view of what is worth changing next. Some clients stop here and some carry on monthly.
How we work in detail
Bring the decision you are stuck on.
The most useful first conversations cover what has changed in the business, what it is costing you, and where the internal disagreement is.
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