ChipChip is a design duo based in the Netherlands. We are specialized in UI/UX design, app and website design. We use our design expertise and experience to find solutions that are creative and effective to achieve our clients' business goals.

The first step of every project is have a talk with the client team. We listen carefully to the problems they are trying to solve and seek to understand the user needs and pain points of the user. Besides this we also take the business and technical requirements into consideration. Often the client has specific knowlegde and experience of the target group, so we will ask the client to share this information if possible. Collaboration is key to success.

During this early stage we will gather ideas/inspiration and plan the project roughly. For project planning we like to use Airtable, Trello and/or Asana. A typical design project turnaround time can be anywhere between 2 to 3 weeks or 5 to 6 weeks (or more). To get a good overview of the project we will do UI sketching and write down some ideas in our favorite Moleskine notebook.

Based on the project requirements and scope we start work on the UI/UX design and initial concept designs. In this early phase we strive to establish the design direction and have a basis of the design system early on. We consider this to be a critical foundational phase of the project, where we aim to come up with the so called heart and soul of the design. Think of things like direction direction, interaction model, design system, etc.

Besides working on the concept UI designs, we will also work on concept icon designs and illustrations. Often the client wishes to have a custom icon set and illustrations. Our design tool of choice is Sketch, but we can also work in Figma. For icons and illustrations we prefer to work in the Adobe Creative Suite, namely Illustrator. For animation we use Adobe Animate and After Effects.

After reviewing the initial design concepts with the client we continue working on the designs. We upload the designs on InVision as this makes it easier to give feedback. Most of the time the client likes the design direction of the first design concept, but in rare cases if they don't, we will try to come up with an alternate solution. 9 out of 10 times the client will have feedback and we think this is great, because good feedback allows us to learn more and iterate accordingly. We love feedback!

During this phase we continue to work on the UI designs in Sketch (or Figma) and necessary visuals (icons and illustrations). This is a creative and iterative process. It is often not possible to know in advance what screens or design details we need to design. And that is a good thing in our opinion, because creative exploration oftens leads to better results. It's not much fun if we already know everything in advance, right?

Depending on the preferences of the client we will deliver the design assets to the client/development team in Sketch or Figma format. We can assist the developent team wherever possible and required. For most projects we create a design library with all UI components, colors, font sizes, icons and illustrations, etc. All structured and organized in an easy to use design system. This design system enables better collaboration and makes it much easier for developer team to implement the designs in code. Since the Sketch or Figma files are well structured, the dev team will be able to find everything they need quickly.

Sometimes we can also implement the designs in code if the client requires this (front-end in particular). For website development our tech stack of choice is Gatsby/React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS and Emotion. Depending on the client requirements we can additionally integrate a CMS into the website. Our favorite headless CMS is Sanity. We have also worked with Contentful and Strapi.