Studio Black · Product design & build
Strategy, UX, interface and engineering in one studio. Fifteen years of practice in automotive, healthcare, fintech and connected products, on web, mobile, TV, in-car and voice.
Five ropes in a tangle, one for each step of how we work. Pull a rope clear of the others and its step shows: Frame, Shape, Design, Build, Ship & run.
FrameShapeDesignBuildShip & runPull each rope clear of the knot.
Interviews, workflow analysis, constraints, success metrics. We learn how the work actually happens before we touch it.
Product definition, information architecture, key flows, MVP scope, a prototype in users’ hands, and a decision on which platforms the product lives on, and in what order.
Interface, interaction and a design system (tokens, components, documentation), validated with users as it forms, and built to hold across every platform in scope.
Spec-driven engineering. Every feature starts as a written specification and implementation plan; code is reviewed against it and verified before it merges. Privacy engineering throughout.
Launch, monitoring, measurement, iteration. Stay on as a product partnership, or hand over cleanly with documentation.
01What we do
Most products fail in the gaps: between strategy and design, design and engineering, a prototype and production. We close them by doing the whole job under one roof.
01
Research, definition and scope. We find the right problem before anything gets designed, and write it down so everyone builds the same thing.
02
UX, interface and design systems for products that have to be understood at a glance (in a car, on a ward, on a trading desk) and behave as one product on every platform they live on.
03
Production software, engineered to be maintained. Design and build run as one process, so nothing is lost in a hand-off.
04
Some domains have rules that don’t bend: safety, regulation, latency, trust. We’ve designed inside them for fifteen years, so they don’t need explaining.
02Multi-platform
Few products live on one screen any more. A car maker’s product is a dashboard, a phone and a voice. A broadcaster’s is a TV, a browser and a remote. A connected device is hardware, firmware and an app. We’ve designed for the platforms most studios never touch, and we keep them behaving as a single product.
Platform-native, product-consistent. Every platform gets its own interaction model (glanceable in the car, ten-foot on the TV, thumb-first on the phone, hands-free by voice) inside one design language and one set of rules.
Design systems built for more than one screen. Tokens, components, governance and lifecycle management that hold across platforms and regions, including platforms with decade-long lives and no app-store updates.
Proven where it’s hardest. An in-car platform, a companion app, a streaming service, a device taken from concept to shelf.
03Expertise
04Selected engagements
Work led by the studio’s principals, before and through Studio Black.
Home-screen domain ownership, EV and navigation features, voice agent, connected services, and in-car commerce that opened a pay-per-view revenue stream. Concurrent platforms under lifecycle management.
Across web, iOS and Android. Feature design and multi-region design-system governance for a distributed organisation.
Deployed across hospitals, pharma and research institutes. A modular long-term-condition system where a clinic can configure its own patient app; a specialist recovery app launched on it.
Trader workflows and interpretable model output for detecting relative-value dislocations. Features across search, analysis, monitoring and visualisation.
Web, iOS, Android and TV. A retention-led redesign of chain-play, and a full-platform rebrand and design-system migration.
Hardware, firmware and app from concept to manufacture.
05Approach
Design and build run as a single, gated process. Specs before code, verification before release, privacy by design throughout.
Interviews, constraints, success metrics.
A brief everyone agrees with.
Definition, flows, scope, prototype.
What to build and what to leave out.
Interface and design system, validated with users.
A system, not screens.
Spec-driven engineering with review and verification gates.
Software you own.
Launch, measure, iterate.
A partnership if you want one.
06Studio
Every engagement is led by a principal with fifteen years of product and design leadership across automotive, healthcare and fintech, working with senior researchers, designers and engineers assembled for the problem. You work directly with the people doing the work.
London