Every Fieldstone project opens with the same week, and it contains no design work at all. We call it the audit, and clients occasionally try to skip it. We do not let them, because everything good that happens later is standing on what this week turns up.
The audit has three passes. First, the business as it is: what is sold, to whom, at what margin, through which door. Second, the words as they are: every page, label, email, and sign read aloud, because reading aloud finds the lies — the claims nobody can back and the promises nobody keeps. Third, the customer’s path: we buy the thing, book the thing, ask the awkward question, and write down every moment of friction.
The week ends with a short document, never more than six pages: what is true about this business, what the site must do, and what it must refuse to do. That third list is the valuable one. Most websites fail by accumulation — every reasonable request granted until the whole says nothing.
Only then do we open a design tool. By that point the decisions that matter are already made, and the design work becomes what it should be: giving a true thing a form worthy of it.
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