PHX

The method

Six stages, and the last one feeds the third

This is how I take a market from a segment to shipped work. I ran it on paid social before I wrote code and I run it on the systems I build now. The stages do not change between those two. What changes is what comes out of them.

It is not a circle

The first two stages ground everything after them and they stay open: needs get reassessed for as long as the work runs. The last four repeat on every cycle. Six equal arcs would claim six equal jobs and that is the thing every stock cycle diagram gets wrong.

It refuses work

A problem with nothing specific against it does not become a task. It stays a question. Most of what stops me building the wrong thing happens in that refusal rather than in the building.

Run once, at the start

Needs and market

Work out what the business actually needs before deciding what to make. Then look hard at the market it is selling into.

  1. 01What the business is trying to move, in its own words
  2. 02Who the product is genuinely for and who it is not for
  3. 03The distinct audiences worth separating rather than averaging
  4. 04What each of them is already doing instead

What it hands onA prioritised set of audiences and the problem each one has.

In what I build nowThe same conversation before a system is specified: what the business needs, who uses it and what they do today instead.

Competitor and reference research

Find out what the category already looks like. The work has to be unlike it on purpose and not by accident.

  1. 01What the direct competitors are running and what they are claiming
  2. 02What the category has trained the audience to expect
  3. 03Reference collected from outside the category. That is where the good ideas usually are
  4. 04The conventions worth keeping and the ones worth breaking on purpose

What it hands onA read on the category and a shortlist of what to avoid looking like.

In what I build nowThe same sweep before I design an interface: what the incumbents do, what users already expect and where the convention is worth refusing.

Runs every cycle

The innovation

Make the actual idea. This is the stage that cannot be delegated and the one everything downstream is spent on.

  1. 01A new way to show the product that has not run before
  2. 02The angle for each audience, mapped to the problem it answers
  3. 03Ideas argued with while they are still cheap to kill
  4. 04The concept named so it can be tracked and beaten later

What it hands onNamed concepts, each with an audience, an angle and a reason to exist.

In what I build nowThe feature itself. What it does that nothing else does, named and specified before anyone builds it.

Storyboard and production

Turn the concept into something a team can actually make. This happens before anything is shot.

  1. 01The stage plan: what happens, in what order and the job of each beat
  2. 02The messaging and copy strategy for the piece
  3. 03The hook and the scroll stopper that has to survive the first second
  4. 04Caption strategy, including the spoken style a real person would use
  5. 05What has to be in frame at every stage, and why

What it hands onA shot plan a team can execute without asking what was meant.

In what I build nowThe build spec: states, edge cases, copy and the order a person meets them in, written before the first component.

Variations

Build the versions that let one idea be tested properly instead of guessed at.

  1. 01The same idea composed for each placement, never resized into it
  2. 02Length cuts that are different edits rather than trims
  3. 03The one variable changed at a time so a result can be read
  4. 04Enough versions that the test has something to say

What it hands onA set where every difference is deliberate and therefore legible.

In what I build nowThe same discipline in a build. One change per release where it matters so I can tell what caused what.

Champions

Read what came back and name what won. Then feed it into the next idea instead of filing it.

  1. 01What actually performed and the version it beat
  2. 02Why it won, separated from why it was expected to
  3. 03The winner promoted into the next round as the thing to beat
  4. 04What the result changes about the concept and occasionally about the audience read

What it hands onA champion and a sharper brief for the next pass.

In what I build nowShip, read, iterate. The release informs the next spec and the loop is the same loop.

The champion becomes the thing the next idea has to beat

Why it transfers

The examples belong under the work they came from

This page is the method and nothing else. What each engagement produced at each stage lives on that engagement's own page, where a reader can see the depth of it rather than a sample. The stages do not move when a new engagement files under them, and that is the only test of a method that matters. The alternative is a description of how somebody once worked, and that is worth nothing to anybody else.

The method | PHX Websites