Tech Done Right

Agile Teams and Escaping Velocity with Doc Norton and Claire Podulka Follow us on Twitter! @tech_done_right, leave us a review on iTunes, and please sign up for our newsletter! Guests Doc Norton: Co-Founder and CEO of CTO2. Claire Podulka: Project Manager at Table XI. Summary How can you tell whether an agile software team is successful? Many teams use a single measure: velocity. Doc Norton, author of Escape Velocity, and Claire Podulka join the show to discuss why velocity is not a useful measure: it doesn't explain the problems with an unsuccessful team, and successful teams probably don't need it. We discuss the problems with velocity, what to use instead, and get on soapboxes for our least favorite agile anti-patterns. Notes 02:48 - Metrics for Agile Teams: Velocity Escape Velocity: Better Metrics for Scrum Teams by Doc Norton Trust Driven Development by Noel Rappin 06:15 - Using Velocity 07:49 - Problems When Relying Solely on Velocity and Estimation 12:35 - Theory of Flow 15:17 - Body Weight Analogy 17:17 - Assessing Team Health 18:37 - Team Temperature (Joy) 21:51 - Lead Time and Cycle Time 30:04 - Managing Estimation and Team Metrics When Teams and Scope Change 33:17 - Using Metrics: Large Organizations vs Small Organizations 39:18 - Breaking Down Team Velocity at the Individual LevelSpecial Guests: Claire Podulka and Doc Norton.

From Idea To Company With Maci Peterson and Alicia Drucker Follow us on Twitter! @tech_done_right, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, and please sign up for our newsletter! Guests Maci Peterson: Co-founder and CEO of On Second Thought. Alicia Drucker: Director of Software Delivery at Table XI Summary How does an idea become a pitch become a company? Join Maci Peterson, founder of the startup On Second Thought, and Alicia Drucker, from Table XI, to discuss how a bad text can lead to a good pitch and then a funded startup. How hard is it to break into Silicon Valley if you don't match the expected image of an entrepreneur? Maci discusses how diversity and inclusivity improved her startup business. Notes We had an unusually high number of audio quality issues this time around, we're sorry. 01:39 - Starting On Second Thought 03:26 - Pitch Competitions 04:53 - From Idea To Company 07:04 - Sending a Bad Text To Getting To SXSW 09:05 - Taking a Leap of Faith and Starting a Tech Company 10:46 - Funding the Company 12:30 - Breaking Into Silicon Valley 18:46 - Diversity and Inclusivity Through the Looking Glass: When Upward Mobility and Access to Tech are a Train Stop Away by Stephanie Morillo Michelle Obama to Silicon Valley: 'Are you ready to have women at the table?' 27:05 - Encouraging Inclusivity While Leveraging a Product 31:14 - Speaking Up and Sharing Stories 36:39 - Taking Action After Speaking Up Quick note that this was recorded June 7th, and the Uber story has taken some twists and turns since them. We got cut off before we could give Maci's contact information, you can find her on Twitter at @macipeterson and On Second Thought at https://www.onsecondthought.co and @onsecondthoughtSpecial Guests: Alicia Drucker and Maci Patterson.Sponsored By: Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

Livable Code With Sarah Mei Follow us on Twitter! @tech_done_right, leave us a review on iTunes, and please sign up for our newsletter! Guest Sarah Mei: Founder of RailsBridge, Director of Ruby Central, Chief Consultant at DevMynd Software. Summary Is your code the kind of cluttered house you might find on a reality TV show? Or the kind of sleek, minimalist house you might find in a architectural magazine. Neither one sounds like a place you could comfortably live. Sarah Mei joins the podcast to talk about Livable Code, what makes a codebase livable, how to negotiate tension between junior and senior developers and how Rails deals with developer happiness. Notes 01:33 - What is meant by “Livable Code”? 04:25 - Where does codebase abstraction go wrong? 05:41 - What makes a codebase livable? Code Climate 09:16 - Calibrating the Right Level for Your Team: Retrospective Meetings 12:22 - Principles of a Codebase 18:21 - Alleviating Tension Between Junior and Senior Developers 22:57 - The Goal of Career Development 26:42 - Guiding Architecture Choices on a Team 30:37 - Does testing help? 34:23 - Programmer Happiness 37:42 - The Attitude Toward JavaScript 39:01 - The Right Design For Your Codebase is SubjectiveSpecial Guest: Sarah Mei.Sponsored By: Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward. Links:Confreaks TV | How to be a Better Junior Developer - RailsConf 2014

Managing For Career Development with Claire Lew and Dan Hodos Follow us on Twitter @tech_done_right, leave us a review on iTunes, and please sign up for our newsletter! Guests Claire Lew: CEO of Know Your Company Dan Hodos: Table XI’s Director of Operations Summary How can you get honest feedback from co-workers, even when you are their manager? How can you support your team's career growth and support them as they improve their skills? Claire Lew, the CEO of Know your Company, and Dan Hodos, Table XI's Director of Operations, join Noel to discuss why listening is the most important thing you can do when getting feedback, how specific questions can break the "fine" reflex, how sticky notes can help with career growth, and the one thing you should never do in a one-on-one meeting. Notes 01:33 - Why One-on-One Meetings Are Important 03:16 - Creating a Safe Space for Employees: Make Empathy Your Mission 05:03 - Active Listening and Asking Questions 07:15 - How often should these meetings occur? 08:58 - Sponsorship and Career Mentoring 10:19 - Table XI’s “Sticky Note Game” 12:56 - What are the things you shouldn’t do during a one-on-one? 15:18 - Receiving Feedback Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High Yes, And: How Improvisation Reverses "No, But" Thinking and Improves Creativity and Collaboration 19:41 - Favorite Questions 21:03 - Balancing Natural Conversation with Asking Tough Questions 24:12 - Conducting Remote One-on-Ones 25:29 - Investing in Your Mentees 29:17 - Surprising Revelations Learned While Building Know Your Company Our Biggest Blindspots 32:24 - Creating Environments for Employees to Flourish Resources: Claire: Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High The Know Your Company Blog The Know Your Company Knowledge Center Dan: Yes, And: How Improvisation Reverses "No, But" Thinking and Improves Creativity and Collaboration Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us taking an improv class. Noel: RSA Animate — Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us Bossypants by Tina Fey Special Guests: Claire Lew and Dan Hodos.Sponsored By: Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

Avoiding Legacy Code with Michael Feathers Follow us on Twitter! @tech_done_right or leave us a review on iTunes and sign up for our newsletter! Guest Michael Feathers: Author of Working Effectively with Legacy Code; r7krecon.com Summary What makes a code base go bad and become "Legacy Code"? Can teams avoid writing bad code? Michael Feathers, author of Working Effectively With Legacy Code joins Tech Done Right to talk about technical debt, how communication can prevent bad coding practices, why coding problems are never just about code, and what it's like to go around the world seeing the worst code messes ever written. Notes 02:36 - The Definition of “Legacy Code” 04:25 - What makes code bases go bad? 07:26 - Working as a Team to Avoid Technical Debt and Other Problems 09:49 - Tools and Techniques That Have Changed Since the Book was Written scythe 12:38 - Lack of Institutional Memory 15:24 - What creates technical debt? Scrum Extreme Programming 22:50 - “Symbiotic Design” Symbiotic Design Provocation Symbiotic Design Implications Conway’s Law 25:38 - Test-Driven Development Keynote - Writing Software (2014 TDD is dead from DHH) RailsConf 2017: Opening Keynote by David Heinemeier Hansson 31:44 - Fads in Codebases 36:58 - Error Handling in Applications (in Relation to Conway’s Law)Special Guest: Michael Feathers.Sponsored By: Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward. Links: Working Effectively With Legacy Code michaelfeathers/scythe: A tool for detecting barely used code in production

Design Sprints with Kai Haley and Zeke Binion Follow us on Twitter! @tech_done_right or leave us a review on iTunes and sign up for our newsletter! Guests Kai Haley: Interaction Designer on Google’s Design Relations Team, leads the Sprint Master Academy Zeke Binion: Former Director of Design for Table XI and runs Code for Designers Summary Do you have a product that needs improvement, or a process to define? Is your team looking for a way to generate and test new ideas quickly? The Design Sprint process, created at Google, is a structured way to explore a problem, create a solution, and get user feedback, all in five days or less. Join Kai Haley, who teaches sprint facilitation at Google, and Zeke Binion, who has run many sprints, as they show Noel Rappin how to use Design Sprints. Notes 01:24 - What is a “Design Sprint?” Who should use them? What are they good for? 04:08 - The Sprint Book: Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Jake Knapp, with John Zeratsky, Braden Kowitz from Google Ventures Design Sprint Kit 06:49 - Implementing Sprints Into a Team and High-level Goals How to Conduct Your Own Google Design Sprint From Google Ventures, The 6 Ingredients You Need To Run A Design Sprint 10:47 - Facilitating Design Sprints; or “Being a Sprint Master” 16:40 - “How Might We…?” Brainstorming Sessions 19:32 - Journey Mapping and User Experience Mapping 23:45 - Success Metrics 25:18 - Sketching, Comparison, and Presenting Ideas “Crazy Eights” Sketching Sessions 32:12 - The Deciding Stage: aka Prototyping 36:29 - User Interviews / Usability Studies 40:36 - Learning to Facilitate Design SprintsSpecial Guests: Kai Haley and Zeke Binion.Sponsored By: Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

Conference Speaking and Diverse Perspectives with Carina C. Zona and Mark Yoon Summary Want to start speaking at conferences? We go over how to get your first conference acceptance, then how to become a better speaker over time. For conference organizers, we also discuss how to find the best speakers from a diverse set of backgrounds and experiences. Carina C. Zona (@cczona) and Mark Yoon (@wimyoon) join Noel Rappin (@noelrap) on this episode of Tech Done Right. Notes Follow us on Twitter! @tech_done_right or leave us a review on iTunes! Carina C. Zona: Longtime developer and advocate in the tech community, certified sex educator, founder of @CallbackWomen Mark Yoon: Developer and Director of Talent at Table XI 01:12 - @CallbackWomen: What it is and How it Came to Be Website with More Information DevChix 05:45 - Questions You Should Ask as a First-time Speaker and Speaker Outreach 10:06 - The Goal and Mission of @CallbackWomen On BritRuby (Avdi Grimm’s Blog Post Re: Diversity at Conferences) Carina’s Talk: Schemas for the Real World 15:24 - Advice for Conference Organizers to Make Conferences Accessible to Everyone; Internal and External Barriers for Potential Speakers 23:29 - Everyone Has Something Valuable to Contribute and Talk About: Approaching Talk Proposals Nadia Odunayo: The Guest: A Guide To Code Hospitality 32:28 - Getting a Talk Accepted Nickolas Means: How to Crash an Airplane @ RubyConf 2015 38:38 - Benefits and Impacts of Speaking at a ConferenceSpecial Guests: Carina C. Zona and Mark Yoon.Sponsored By: Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

Open-Source Community Management and Safety With Coraline Ada Ehmke and Yana Carstens Follow us on Twitter! @tech_done_right or leave us a review on iTunes! Guests Coraline Ada Ehmke: Open Source Advocate, Creator of The Contributor Covenant, Founding Panelist of Greater Than Code, Senior Engineer on the Community and Safety Team at GitHub Yana Carstens: Senior User Experience Designer at Table XI Summary How can you manage a social media site to maximize community and make all contributors feel safe? Coraline Ada Ehmke (@CoralineAda), from GitHub's Community and Safety Team, and Yana Carstens (@YanaCarstens), a Senior UX designer with Table XI, join Noel on this episode of Tech Done Right. We discuss tools for allowing users more control over their social media environment and community, and how to use personas in design as a way to understand user's goals and guide them toward positive community actions. Notes 02:59 - GitHub’s Community Management and Anti-Harassment Tools Team and the Problems that They Are Trying to Solve 06:47 - Exposing Anti-Harassment Features and Making Them Prominent, Improving User Experience, and Identifying Harassers 15:10 - Throwing Friction to “Jerkfaces”; Block Functionality 19:13 - Sentiment Analysis Eudora 26:38 - Working Together with Other Social Platforms Chatham House Rules 30:38 - What does success look like? “Social Coding” 33:05 - Visibility and Flagging of Comments Resources: Coraline: GitHub Community Guidelines Yana: Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience by Jeff Gothelf UX Booth UX Mastery Usability.gov Special Guests: Coraline Ada Ehmke and Yana Carstens.Sponsored By: Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

Episode 007: Software, Open Source, and Rails with Eileen Uchitelle and Andrew Horner Follow us on Twitter! @tech_done_right or leave us a review on iTunes! Notes How does the Rails core team work? How are new features planned and implemented? How can I contribute? What should I do if I find a security issue in Rails? Our guest is the newest Rails core team member Eileen Uchitelle (@eileencodes) joins Table Xi senior developer Andrew Horner and host Noel Rappin (@noelrap) to discuss Rails, the new testing features in Rails 5.1, and the Rails Core Team. Guests Eileen Uchitelle: Senior Systems Engineer at GitHub on the Platform Systems Team; Member of The Rails Core Team and the Rails Security Team Andrew Horner: Senior Developer at TableXI Summary 01:12 - Eileen: Getting Started as a Developer and Getting Involved with The Rails Core Team CRUD! What to do When Active Record, MySQL, and Your Data Betray You 03:29 - How Rails Governs Itself Internally 05:52 - The Role of the Release Manager 07:32 - Feature Discussions and Prioritization 08:46 - Requesting Features and Raising Issues as a Non-core Team Member HackerOne 17:52 - Backporting 21:44 - System Testing 27:13 - Potential Future Features in 5.1 Security is Broken: Understanding Common Vulnerabilties 32:12 - User Expectations RailsConf 2017: Building Rails ActionDispatch::SystemTestCase Framework 36:12 - Getting Involved in Rails RailsConf 2015 - Breaking Down the Barrier: Demystifying Contributing to Rails Aaron Patterson: I am a puts debugger Special Guests: Andrew Horner and Eileen M. Uchitelle .Sponsored By: Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

Episode 006: Using Software to Create Better Countries: Recovering Healthcare.gov with Andy Slavitt Guest Andy Slavitt: Ran Medicare, Medicaid & ACA for President Obama Summary How can we use software to build better countries? Our guest, Andy Slavitt (@aslavitt), helps us answer by telling us what he learned leading the recovery effort on Healthcare.gov in 2013 and 2014. Andy will talk about the 6,000 defect backlog he inherited when he took over the system, how it got worse before it got better and why it took a culture shift to really improve things. Even if you can't call the White House to berate underperforming contractors, you'll be able to learn how to run a rescue project under monumental pressure. Notes Episode 006: Using Software to Create Better Countries: Recovering Healthcare.gov with Andy Slavitt Follow us on Twitter! @tech_done_right or leave us a review on iTunes! 02:58 - Healthcare.gov The Affordable Care Act 07:28 - The Launch Process and Software Project Coordination Uncle Bob Martin: Healthcare.gov 17:20 - Solving Trust Issues Over Architecture 23:20 - Speaking Up About Problems 27:06 - Turning The Culture Around 30:46 - Focusing on Architecture 34:17 - Taking RisksSpecial Guest: Andy Slavitt.Sponsored By: Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

Episode 005: JavaScript: Islands, Sprinkles, and Frameworks Follow us on Twitter! @tech_done_right or leave us a review on iTunes! Summary Dave Copleand (@davetron5000) and Zach Briggs (@theotherzach) join Noel Rappin (@noelrap) for a Tech Done Right discussion of JavaScript practices. When does it makes sense to build single page JavaScript app? How can your JavaScript and Rails interact? Is it an island of interactivity or a sprinkle of JavaScript? Which frameworks are handling community management well (hint: not Angular)? And how do you test any of this? Guests Dave Copeland: Author of Rails, Angular, Postgres, and Bootstrap Zach Briggs: JavaScript Practice Lead at Table XI Show Notes 02:15 - Reasons to Build a Single-Page App Conway’s Law 09:37 - The Ease of Building Web Over Single-Page Apps 11:30 - Tooling; Navigating Good Choices vs Bad Choices 14:31 - Setup Bower webpack Browserify Broccoli Yarn The Asset Pipeline 16:30 - Combining a Rails App and a JavaScript App 18:34 - AngularJS; 1 vs 2 Angular React Vue.js 33:05 - Testing jasmine-rails gem Test Double 35:35 - TypeScript Elm Tips & Resources: Dave: Check out Test Double. Zach: As a developer, don’t feel forced into choosing between a single-page app and a non-single-page app on the first day of development. There are infinite points in between when it comes to interactivity. Noel: Read about frameworkless JavaScript in Noel’s book Master Space and Time With JavaScript.Special Guests: Dave Copeland and Zach Briggs.Sponsored By: Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

Episode 004: Testing Summary Sam Phippen, Justin Searls, and Noel Rappin spend this episode talking about the value of test-driven development (TDD) as well as its cost. They discuss the kinds of problems that developers are likely to have after they learn TDD and attempt to apply it to a large application. Learn why Rails is both great and terrible for automated testing, and how testing can influence the structure of your code. Guests Sam Phippen: Engineer at Digital Ocean and member of the RSpec Core Team Justin Searls: Writes bad code effortlessly and cofounder of Test Double. Maintainer of several testing tools, and frequent speaker on test related topics. Show Notes 01:30 - Intermediate Level Problems in Testing 04:58 - The Value of Testing Boundaries by Gary Bernhardt 15:15 - Isolated Unit Tests 17:52 - Structuring Applications 23:13 - Test-Driven Development (TDD) Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests 33:22 - TDD in a Smalltalk Environment 35:00 - Isolating Tests in a Rails Environment Rake Without Rails 36:54 - Test Tools minitest Dan North: Introducing BDD teenytest RSpec Tips & Resources: Sam: Sandi Metz: The Magic Tricks of Testing @ Rails Conf 2013 Test Smells Justin Searls: How to Stop Hating Your Test Suite @ RubyConf 2015 Justin: Find some little problem and instead of implementing it in a Rails app, type bundle.gem and then make up a name and then practice and invent your own way of organizing code and tests so you can break things down. Noel: JUnit Test Infected: Programmers Love Writing Tests As you’re trying to test stuff, really try to focus on going back and forth between the tests and the code more rapidly than you’re probably doing so right now.Special Guests: Justin Searls and Sam Phippen.

Summary Allison McMillan (@allie_p) and Bradley Schaefer (@soulcutter) talk about remote work in the age of Slack. What makes a good remote worker, or a good remote working team? How can you support more junior team members who want to work remotely? How do you email cake to remote workers on launch celebration day? How can you improve code review for remote workers? Guests Allison McMillan: Software Developer at Collective Idea and Rails Girls Bradley Schaefer: Senior Developer at Table XI and the RSpec Core Team Show Notes 01:07 - Working Remotely: Getting Started, Setups, etc. Allison McMillan: Even the Justice League Works Remotely @ RubyConf 2016 03:19 - Coworking Spaces STARTMART 04:34 - What makes an individual successful to be able to work remotely? 07:30 - Gains and Challenges of Working Remotely 10:18 - Transitioning From Onsite to Offsite Work 11:48 - Being the Only Remote Person: How can companies help remote workers feel included? Slack Know Your Company 21:10 - Building Trust Between Companies and Remote Workers 24:30 - Working Remotely in Other Fields First 25:42 - Working Remotely as a Newbie 30:08 - Cultivating Teams and Positivity - rubocop Tips & Resources: Allison: Schedule weekly pairing sessions and make it a goal to ask questions. Zach Holman: Remote-First vs. Remote-Friendly SheNomads Bradley: Try to find pairing tools that work well for you. Remote: Office Not RequiredSpecial Guests: Allison McMillan and Bradley Schaefer.Sponsored By: Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.

Description Brandon Hays and Pete Brooks join the Tech Done Right podcast to discuss career development. We'll discuss some career development questions like: What makes somebody a senior developer? How do you acquire senior developer skills? What can you do to prepare yourself for a lifetime career and ensure that you are properly valued? Show Notes Pete Brooks: Software Developer at Table XI. Author of "How I landed my first programming job" Brandon Hays: “My friend” and line-level developer at OJO Labs 02:07 - Classifying Yourself as a Developer - The Conjoined Triangles of Senior-Level Development (12 Traits Blog Post) 05:51 - Working Independently" “Throw a couple juniors at it!” 09:19 - What does it meant to progress? - Brandon Hays: The long strange trip as a software developer @ RubyConf 2016 - Brandon Hays: Hacking Spacetime for a Successful Career @ RubyConf 2015 - Occam’s Razor 13:43 - Quantifying Value and Talking About Money 17:27 - The Cult of the New: The Approach to Technology and Breaking Into the Industry - Impostor Syndrome 22:54 - Learning New Things and Becoming Professionally Proficient; Levelling - Software Engineer Career Ladder 32:04 - When do I need to move on? Where do I see myself going? 34:20 - What should new developers be doing? Resources: Brandon: John Allspaw: On Being A Senior Engineer Find and befriend a software developer with 25+ years of experience. Pete: Keep following your interests.Special Guests: Brandon Hays and Pete Brooks .

We talk about the role that trust has in building teams, and how improv games can help build that trust and improve the way you deliver feedback. Guests Mark Rickmeier: CEO of Table XI Jessie Shternshus: Founder of The Improv Effect and Author of the book, CTRL-SHIFT Show Notes 01:08 - The Improv Effect and Improv as an Effective Method of Communication - Yes, And! 03:21 - Working with Teams to Build Communication and Trust 05:20 - Ops Conf 06:02 - Tools or Games for Establishing Trust with Others Quickly in a Conference Environment - Commonality Boggle - Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon - Extreme Rock, Paper, Scissors 15:23 - Group Facilitation Techniques 18:13 - Kickoff Techniques for Smaller, New Teams - Agile Software Development 22:30 - Techniques for Remote Team Communication 26:59 - Talking About Failure to Build Trust 28:42 - Giving and Receiving FeedbackSpecial Guests: Jesse Shternshus and Mark Rickmeier.Sponsored By: Table XI: A trusted UX design + software development company. We are 35 meticulous and curious minds in Chicago with a 15 year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Our partners trust us to create innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward.