Design

Immersion: fieldwork, our best brief

Noémie5 November 2026

Before we design a single screen, there’s one step we try never to skip: getting out into the field. Seeing where and how our clients work, meeting the people who’ll use the tool, observing their habits, their constraints and the little tricks they rely on every day. It may sound obvious. Yet many projects are still designed from behind a desk, based on a brief and a handful of meetings. And that’s often where the nasty surprises begin.

Understanding the client, and the people who’ll use the tool

A brief tells you what’s expected of a project, but much less about why. On site, you discover how the organisation really works and, above all, meet the people who’ll use the tool day to day.

Standing or sitting? On a computer or a phone? In a quiet room or with a queue of people waiting? These details change everything.

A day in the field with volunteers

e designed a volunteer management app for a food aid foundation. Hundreds of volunteers, several distribution sites, each with its own schedule and tasks: welcoming beneficiaries, packing parcels, handing them out.

On paper, the need was clear: help coordinators organise distributions, and make it easy for volunteers to sign up.

But before designing anything, we took part in a distribution. On the ground, we saw the real pace of a day, the variety of profiles, and how coordinators juggle attendance, last-minute changes and the people coming through the door.

This immersion directly shaped our choices:

Mobile-first sign-up: volunteers book shifts from their phone, then find their distributions in their personal schedule.
Quick attendance check-in: usable in the middle of a distribution, it also keeps track of volunteer hours.
Tasks assigned by skill: whether it’s the welcome desk, packing or distribution, coordinators build their teams around the day’s needs.
Individual volunteer tracking: a central database records each volunteer’s journey, activities and completed training.
Two separate spaces, one for coordinators and one for volunteers. Everyone finds exactly what they need.

We go into the field whenever we can:

In a newsroom, to understand how an article comes to life and gets published, often against the clock.
At the Cinémathèque suisse, among the screening rooms and printed programmes. That’s where the idea of a dark mode came from, so people can check the website just before a screening without dazzling the whole row.
At the Maison de la Créativité, exploring its spaces to bring its promise to the website: made for children, but never childish.
At the LHC, by going to matches. The arena’s jumbotron inspired the way scores are displayed, and the homepage changes with every game night.

Time well spent

Immersion takes time, that’s true. But it saves far more later on: fewer back-and-forths, fewer features to rework, and tools that people genuinely adopt.

And let’s be honest, it’s also what makes our job so exciting. An ice rink, a cinema, a newsroom: every project opens the door to a new world.

Designing for people starts with going to meet them.