Our Process
The framework to perform work no matter which of our core competencies are being delivered, with a focus on blending designer with technical expertise.
■ Design Intelligence® / Integration / Change Enablement
human-centered design evolved
What’s Different About Our Approach?
At Steampunk, there are two driving principles for delivery to our clients—speed and quality. Often, these two dimensions of project delivery are at odds with one another, meaning to go fast you sacrifice quality, or to get high quality it takes much longer. Through delivery to our clients, we have found that by integrating our Agile process management, DevSecOps tools and techniques, and our Human-Centered Design approach, we achieve extremely fast delivery of a high-quality product. We call this approach Design Intelligence® (DI). Design Intelligence® is the lens through which we generate human-centered solutions. It’s the nexus of how we define, create, and deliver products and services – grounded in the understanding of the people who use them.
DI brings together proven commercial techniques, tools and processes to establish an integrated framework that delivers high value mission solutions to the government faster and with better results in terms of user acceptance and adoption. Steampunk follows our DI framework to perform work no matter which of our core competencies are being delivered, with a focus on blending world-class designers with best-in-class technical expertise. Whether it’s Salesforce, Software Engineering, IT Operations, Data Exploitation, and Cybersecurity work being performed, our goal is to deliver high quality capabilities with speed for mission impact.
When integrated, these activities, tools and methods become a fluid operations model that engages the users at the core of the challenge statement along with appropriate stakeholders to ensure the solutions being delivered are meeting the needs of all parties, that they are practical, secure, productive, and will deliver measurable mission impact.
Principled Approach
We approach each project by fully understanding the problem space from a holistic and human perspective. Through this, we not only uncover the unique challenges each person faces, but also opportunities for how to improve their experience with the products and services they use. We inform strategy through empathy rather than assumptions and assists in stakeholder alignment, goal setting, and prioritization. We do this by facilitating workshops and conversations, surveying, interviewing, and observing users. The results are assets like journey maps, ecosystem maps, and personas that can be referenced throughout the project lifecycle.
In the innovation phase, teams plan, design, and prototype what’s possible through collaboration and co-creation. Our process involves cross functional teams—inviting diverse perspectives to foster creativity and innovation thus driving better-informed solutions. Depending on the engagement, what results might be a high-level strategy to achieve specific mission performance indicators, a service blueprint, or wireframes that outline the foundation of a digital experience or product.
We build validation and trust through rapid prototyping, testing with, and learning from users while making sure we don’t lose sight of technical parameters. This approach improves usability, accessibility, adoption, and satisfaction. It also reduces cost and technical debt by ensuring the experience meets both user needs and technical feasibility before committing to production.
We foster continuous development through measured releases, reporting, and testing, and mitigate risk through qualitative and quantitative data analysis. This ensures that solutions are impactful, sustainable, and always meeting the needs to the people who use them.
what we do best
Integrated into Delivery
We bring together Agile, DevSecOps, and Human-Centered Design techniques to provide the best of each, resulting in a delivery approach that brings speed, transparency, flexibility and technical excellence, all while keeping users and stakeholders at the core of our solutioning.
At the core of all we do, human-centered design keeps our clients’ needs in focus and enables us to do our best work, together.
Helping our clients use Software-as-a-Service platforms to transform the way they serve their customers and achieve their missions.
Since the early days of our company’s history, cybersecurity has been, and will continue to be, a critical mission we serve in defense of our clients, our nation and her interests.
Helping our clients capture, process, store, and exploit, the value of data, in support of strategic, and tactical decision making, and stronger mission achievement.
Bringing together development, operations, and security professionals to bring capability to the mission and embrace cultural change for organizational transformation.
change enablement
Disruption Design™
Understand where people are + needs / concerns / fears
Build the road to success for people to embrace + adopt the change
Activate new strategies, solutions, and processes
We know that “build it and they will come” only works in the movies. To ensure our clients’ systems, processes, and technologies are impactful, we developed Disruption Design™ —a human-centric approach to change enablement. Our Disruption Designers focus on the people impacted by change, engaging them to embrace and adapt to new ways of working while identifying and mitigating areas of resistance. They develop a holistic strategy to manage stakeholders through the change lifecycle: determining change readiness; mobilizing alignment across organizations, divisions, and teams; identifying champions and barriers to adoption; drafting communication and action plans to overcome barriers; understanding learning styles and developing training that best supports adoption; establishing metrics to measure adoption and success. Change is disruptive, but fear and risk can be mitigated by being thoughtful, proactive, and deliberate by design.