Ferrule Studio

Design and engineering studio

We join the drawing to the thing it becomes.

Ferrule works with product teams whose sketches and shipped interfaces have stopped agreeing. That disagreement usually starts at handoff, so that is where we spend our time.

Read the build log See the work

Drag to compare. Left is the sketch, right is the shipped interface. Keyboard: focus the handle, then use the arrow keys, Home or End.

How a project moves

A product, assembled in front of you.

Log lines show a typical engagement. Day counts vary by scope.

Stage 01 · Brief

We ask what the product must not become before we say what it should.

We interview the people who will live with it, then cut scope in the room. Anything we drop is written down so it can come back on purpose.

[09:12] brief.locked journeys=3 dropped=2

Stage 02 · Prototype

Paper first, then clickable, then tested with real users inside a week.

Prototypes are deliberately rough. We change them quickly, and we keep a record of every change and the reason for it.

[D+4] proto.v2 participants=6 changes=14

Stage 03 · Production

Components are built from the same tokens the designers used, so nothing drifts.

Engineering starts before the visuals are final. Contrast, keyboard behaviour and performance budgets are checked as the components are built, not after.

[D+21] tokens.sync drift=0 checks=passing

Stage 04 · Handoff

We leave a repository, a runbook and a recorded walkthrough, then step back.

The goal is a team that can change the product without us. We stay available for questions, but we do not stay in the way.

[D+30] handoff.complete owner=your team

Principles

Two disciplines, one product.

Design

  • We design the failure state before the success state.
  • Every colour has a job and a measured contrast ratio.
  • Motion explains a change. It never decorates one.

Engineering

  • We write the component before we argue about its padding.
  • Performance budgets are part of the spec, not a retrospective.
  • Accessibility is tested in a real browser, not described in a deck.

Most products break at handoff. We work there.

Selected work

Three projects.

Clients are fictional. Outcomes are marked Example and are not measured results.

Tidewater Ledger

Problem
Four finance teams produced four different totals for the same month.
Decision
One shared token set and a single reconciliation view that every team reads from.
Outcome
ExampleReconciliation questions dropped from daily to weekly.

Lantern Clinic booking

Problem
Patients abandoned the booking flow at the insurance step.
Decision
Moved insurance after slot selection and tested the new order with eight people before building it.
Outcome
ExampleAbandonment at that step fell by about a third in the pilot.

Orbit Parcel tracker

Problem
Delivery status was rendered from five tools that disagreed about what "in transit" meant.
Decision
A single state machine, drawn once in the design spec and implemented from the same file.
Outcome
ExampleOne state diagram replaced a forty-page specification.

Engagement

Choose a starting shape.

We scope by problem, not by hours. Commercial terms are shared on the first call.

What do you need first?

Start this conversation

Contact

Bring us the part that is stuck.

Tell us what you are building and where it is stuck. We reply within two working days, usually with a question rather than a pitch.

hello@ferrule.studio

Set in Georgia and the system interface stack. Hand-written HTML and CSS, a small amount of vanilla JavaScript, and no external requests.