How we work ·

Don’t wait months to see it work

Every Wednesday you see something working, and you decide what we build next. You can look at the work any day of the week, so you never wait months to find out what you paid for.

See it week by week ↓

01 · Where it started

Online, but not for sale

  1. Dec 3, 2024How should one work be presented so a buyer can tell what it is, how big it is and whether it is for sale?Creation and testing of art listing designs
  2. Dec 10, 2024Which channels does her work belong on, and how do they connect back to one place?Identification and connection strategy
  3. Dec 17, 2024Her work, gathered into series and put online on a Webflow template, built that week.Organization of collections and website
  4. Dec 24, 2024How her site should promote a show and send buyers to the gallery hosting it.Planning gallery experiences and exhibitions
  5. Feb 21–28, 2025Every work counted, sized and priced, in two weeks.Organization of inventory and pricing
Her first weeks, as invoiced · one question each, one piece of work

When Sara Paula Hoffman, a painter and sculptor, started working with us in December 2024, you could admire her paintings online, but you couldn’t buy one.

The usual next step is a plan: meetings, a proposal, and a website delivered some months later. We did something smaller. The first week answered one question: how should one painting be shown so a buyer can tell what it is, how big it is, and whether it’s for sale? At the end of that week she had listing designs to look at, not a document about them.

Every week after that was one more question, paid for as one piece of work. Which places online her work belonged on. Her work gathered into series, on a simple website built that same week. How a gallery show should sit on her own site. Then, in February, every work counted, sized and priced, in two weeks. Nothing custom was built until the cheap version had shown what it couldn’t do.

Each week was a trial, to learn one thing. Each result was a demo, in her hands, to decide what came next.

Any week could have been the last. That’s the point of working this size: you never pay for more than you’ve seen working. The whole case lists every week as it was invoiced.

02 · The test

When her first show opened

AT THE GALLERYBACK AT THE STUDIOTHE REST OF HER WORKSHOW PRICESHOW PRICESHOW PRICETHE SHOW · THE GALLERY’S DATES1 ONE SOLD DURING THE SHOW2 THE SHOW CLOSES · ONE CHANGETWO COME HOMEHER OWN PRICEHER OWN PRICE3 QUESTIONS COME TO HER AGAIN4 NOT ONE PRICE MOVEDONE SHOW, START TO FINISH · ONE CHANGE AT THE CLOSE,AND NOTHING ELSE TO PUT BACK
Fig. 01 · One show, start to finish · the red square is the one change at the close

The morning after her first gallery show opened, we saw the gallery listing three of her works at 40 to 53% under her own price.

Both prices had to be true at once. While the show ran, those three works were sold the gallery’s way, and anyone who asked about one was sent to the gallery. The rest of her work had to stay at her own price, and so did those three, the day the show ended.

Most websites would have written over each painting’s own price, and someone would have had to remember to change it back. We built something else that same morning: on her site, a gallery’s price sits on top of hers like a sale sticker on a price tag, with a start date and an end date. Peel the sticker off and the tag underneath is just as it was.

One sold. When the show closed, the other two came home, and putting them back took one change. No other work on her site moved by a dollar. Noticing the show had ended took longer: her site showed the gallery’s prices for twenty days before we changed them. So now the site checks the gallery’s listings and the show’s dates every morning, and sends her a note when something needs deciding. It never changes a price on its own.

Something happened that nobody had planned for, and the way it was built held.

03 · How we work

A trial, then a demo, both with dates

ONE WEEK, A DAY AT A TIME · OPEN EVERY DAYREFINEWEDBUILDTHUTESTFRIMEASURESATANALYZESUNINTERPRETMONREFLECTTUEWEDWE EXPECTWRONG IF1 PLAN: PRIORITIES, WHAT DONE LOOKS LIKE2 OPEN ANY DAY: A LOOK AT WHAT WORKS NOWCHANGE COURSETHE SAME DAYNO WAITING FOR A DEMO DAY3 BY THE END OF THE WEEK: IT WORKS, AND YOU DECIDEKEEP GOING: THE NEXT WEEKCHANGE DIRECTIONSTOPCHEAP, AFTER ONE WEEKREFINE, BUILD, TEST, MEASURE, ANALYZE, INTERPRET, REFLECT,AND WEDNESDAY COMES AROUND AGAIN
Fig. 02 · One week of work, one day at a time, from planning on Wednesday to a working demo the next Wednesday. You can look at it any day, and at the end you choose what happens next.

The trial

Built to find something out

A trial is a small piece of work that answers one question about your business, the way an exterminator treats one room and books the follow-up visit before the truck leaves: on that day, the ants are gone or they aren’t. Before we start, we write down what we expect to find, and what result would tell us we were wrong. Then we build the smallest thing that could give either answer. A trial that could only ever say yes would tell you nothing, and cost you the same.

The demo

Built so you can decide

A demo is that follow-up visit. It’s the thing itself, working, and you open it and use it yourself: any day you want a look, since the work is open the whole week, and by the end of every week without fail. Beside it we tell you plainly what we learned, including what went against us. Then you choose: keep going, change direction, or stop. Stopping is a perfectly good answer, and at this size it’s a cheap one. That’s why we keep things this size.

04 · Why we work this way

A year of meetings, and nothing to use

THE LAST ONEA TRIALDISCOVERYSESSIONSREADOUTROADMAPPHASE 5THE BUDGET · NEARLY GONETEN DAYSNO DATENO END1 SOMETHING WORKING2 THE DATEWITHOUT A DATE, NOBODY HAS TO FIND OUT ·WITH ONE, SOMETHING HAS TO WORK BY THEN
Fig. 03 · Two ways to spend a budget. On the left, a project with no end date, its phases growing while the money runs out. On the right, a trial: ten days, and something has to work by the last one.

Nearly every small business we sit down with tells us some version of this.

They hired someone, and plenty happened. There were meetings, research, a plan for the year and some genuinely good-looking slides, all made by capable people working hard. But at the end, the thing they’d paid for didn’t exist, and the money was gone.

Nobody lied. The trouble is that nothing in that kind of arrangement names a date on which something has to work. It’s a treatment with no follow-up visit booked: nobody is ever obliged to go back and look, and the work can carry on, in good faith, for a very long time.

A plan can go on forever. A trial ends on a date.

05 · What we built for Paula

Four things we hold to, on her site

01020304GALLERYHER SITESHE WRITES THE EMAILA PERSON MAKES THE CHANGEONE LIST OF HER WORKSEVERYTHING ELSE MADE FROM ITTWO PRICES DISAGREEA PERSON DECIDES WHICHTHE SHOW PRICE, KEPT APARTONE CHANGE TAKES IT AWAYWHAT EACH OF THE FOUR MEANTFOR ONE ARTIST’S WEBSITE
Fig. 04 · The four, as they look on her site · each red square is a place a person decides

These four come from a short statement software people wrote in 2001, the Agile Manifesto. Most of the industry quotes it and few follow it. Here’s what each one meant for one artist’s website.

  1. 01 She keeps working the way she already works

    Paula doesn’t fill in forms. When she agrees a show with a gallery, she writes the email she would have written anyway. Someone reads her inbox at the start of every working session and turns what she wrote into the change on her site. One day a program may read those emails for her. If it does, it will get the change ready and wait, and a person will still say yes.

  2. 02 The site describes itself

    What search engines read about her work, and what AI assistants quote, is produced from the same list of works the site itself shows. Nobody has to keep those descriptions up to date by hand, so they can’t quietly fall out of date. Even the case study was written after the site went live, from the site.

  3. 03 A person makes the call

    Every day the site compares what the gallery lists with what her own site shows. When the two disagree, it could simply pick one. It doesn’t, because why two prices differ is a matter between Paula and her gallery, and no program knows which one is right. It points out the difference and leaves the decision to a person.

  4. 04 Ready for what nobody planned

    Not every new piece belongs to a series, so the home page changed to lead with her recent work, and a piece no longer needs a series to go online. And when her first show closed, the two works that came home went back to her own price in one change, because from the second day of the show its prices had been kept apart from hers.

What it is not

A treadmill with a nicer name

Short rounds are meant to lower the risk, not to squeeze people. There are no scores, no meetings anyone dreads, and nothing carries on just because it’s on the calendar. If there’s nothing worth finding out this week, we’ll say so. The whole arrangement is there so that being wrong is quick and survivable, and so that you find out in a week rather than in a year.

Experiment-led · trial to learn · demo to decide

Book a free first call.

Bring the thing that isn’t working. We’ll tell you what we’d build first, what it would teach us, and what would make us tell you to stop. If none of that is worth a week of your money, we’ll say that too.