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Studio

How a project actually runs.

Hayes Labs is a digital systems studio, building websites, automation, and custom software for businesses where the result has to keep working rather than just look finished.

Strategy, design, and implementation are one engagement, accountable from the first conversation about the business to the system running in production.

It matters most where the site, the internal tool, or the automation is load-bearing — where the work depends on understanding the business and not only the brief.

The engagement model

Four phases, and what happens in each.

  1. 01Discover

    Understand the business, goals, users, current systems, constraints, and what success needs to look like.

  2. 02Define

    Shape the strategy, architecture, experience, scope, technical approach, timeline, and implementation plan.

  3. 03Build

    Design, develop, integrate, test, and refine the solution through structured review cycles.

  4. 04Launch & Evolve

    Deploy, verify production quality, support adoption and handoff, and identify future improvements where appropriate.

In practice

How decisions get made.

  1. 01

    The agreed picture is written down before anything is built, including what is not in it.

    Most disputes are not about quality. They are about two pictures of what was agreed.

  2. 02

    Work is reviewed on a live deployment at each stage, never in a slide.

    What you sign off is the thing itself, on the device you will use.

  3. 03

    A decision that moves cost, timeline, or quality reaches you before it is taken, with a recommendation attached.

    Not afterwards, as a line on an invoice. Where a request would make the system worse you will be told why — and then it is your call.

  4. 04

    Accounts, repositories, and documentation are in your name from the first day, not handed over on the last.

    A build nobody can change without calling the person who wrote it is not finished.

Standards

What every build is held to.

Targets we design and test against, and checks that run before anything ships. They are also the standards this site is built to, so the claim is checkable against the page you are reading it on.

01

Accessibility

WCAG 2.2 AA

Designed and tested against the AA criteria. Automated checks on every route; what a scanner cannot see is verified by hand.

axe-core on every route · keyboard-only passes · focus order and return · reduced-motion parity

02

Performance

95+

Release target

The mobile Lighthouse floor every page is designed to clear before it ships. Field performance depends on the network and the device; what we hold is the payload and the lab.

Layout shift under 0.02 · blocking time under 50ms · per-route JavaScript budgeted on every build

03

Testing

Every route

Unit tests for logic that fails silently, browser tests for what a screenshot cannot prove: focus traps, reduced-motion parity, layout shift, redirects.

Run against a production build, not a dev server

  • Strict

    Type safety

    TypeScript with no escape hatches. A project that does not typecheck does not deploy.

  • Real deploys

    Review

    Reviewed on a live deployment at each stage, not in a slide.

  • Your accounts

    Handoff

    Domains and infrastructure in your name from the first day, with written documentation.

Tell us what you need built or improved.

A short message is enough to start. We’ll come back with a clear read on scope and the right next step.

Start a Projectchristian@hayeslabs.io