Our Process
Highland has spent the last 10 years refining an innovation process and team structure that is designed to deliver experiences that matter. The Highland Way delivers increased overall value, faster time to market, and reduced total cost.
Through uninterrupted momentum and progress across 5 stages of innovation, we’re impatient to get to real impact and ROI.
The Highland Way offers:
One team and one goal throughout.
We dedicate a multi-disciplinary team that collaborates throughout the entire process. We bring designers into the research, developers into design, and researchers into development—instead of specialized, siloed teams that suffer from lack of context. Continuous team member involvement throughout the process boosts shared knowledge, establishes a collective project history, and strengthens coherent decision-making.
Tangible momentum, confronted reality, less risk
Dwelling too long in just research or design can create a false sense of progress and certainty. Risks around usage, adoption, and value may not be discovered until after a full MVP has been developed, leading to costly rework or failure. Our integrated process reduces these risks much earlier by moving swiftly through the process stages and increases the likelihood of delivering a successful product.
Quicker clarity. Earlier decisions.
We dedicate a multi-disciplinary team of researchers, designers, developers, and product managers to our end-to-end projects. The team works together closely to openly discuss and reveal unexpected realities, best practices, and collaborative workflows along the product journey. Bringing all perspectives to the table in this way allows you to make better-informed decisions earlier and faster throughout the project.
Launching ahead of your competition.
Like you, we're not happy until a new product is in-market. We don't exist simply to craft research insights or visual designs, but to launch successful digital products and experiences. Our process champions introduction of working interfaces, functional prototypes, and software earlier than most, allowing for better learning, reduced risk, and the ability to ship an MVP months before the typical process.
What we see happening elsewhere:
The typical innovation and digital product process elsewhere in the industry works in a fairly linear way, moving through research, design, and development in sequential phases where each phase is dominated by a singular disciplinary focus and siloed team.
This disjointed approach reduces the value of the product introduced to the market, because so much context and learning is lost or missed along the way. It also leaves gaps in progress and adds time to get teams on the same page between each stage, often increasing the timeline and creating wasted effort.
How can we help?
