We help teams identify friction, improve usability, and validate measurable UX improvements.
Pinpoint where users hesitate, abandon flows, or lose trust.
Improve usability, clarity, and conversion without disrupting existing user behaviour.
Track the impact through engagement, retention, and conversion metrics.
Black Arcs built Citisketch to let communities model land-use changes and engage residents in planning decisions — but the interface required specialist knowledge to operate, defeating the platform's core purpose. Spandrel mapped cognitive load points across the interface and redesigned it iteratively against usability testing, making expert-level tools legible to the people who needed to act on them.
"By the end of Spandrel's work on the project... the application had been transformed into a much more coherent, usable, and well-designed solution."
Archaeological field recording has historically meant paper notes transcribed back at the office — every manual step introduced errors and consumed skilled time. Spandrel designed and built Stratum with the archaeologist as the primary constraint: structured data entry optimised for field conditions, GPS and photo capture without leaving the recording context, and local data saving with cloud sync when connectivity returns.
ArchaeoSoft built Stratum to put the archaeologist first — removing the redundant manual steps that had always existed between field observation and the final record.
Research libraries have an access problem: the knowledge is there, but the barrier to entry keeps most people out. Sefira reframes the library as a game world: players explore collections, hunt endangered historical artifacts, and solve AR puzzles to recover them across time. Spandrel built the full mobile experience for iOS and Android, including the AR artifact cube mechanic at the heart of the reward loop.
Developed in collaboration with the University of Oxford.
The UNB Art Centre had been running World Water Day events for a decade. For their 10th year, they wanted something that could reach people without requiring them to show up in person; the pandemic made that especially urgent. Spandrel built an iOS and Android app with a standard 3D globe and an AR mode that places the Earth in your physical space, mapped with data on marine ecosystems, glacial retreat, ocean noise, and other water challenges from scientists, oceanographers, and climatologists.
Built so a decade of public-science programming could reach people anywhere — not just visitors who could show up in person.
Every number above is a friction point someone didn't fix.
Here's how we fix yours →
Visual Refresh · Same UX, New Look
⏱ 2–3 weeks"We're losing demos to competitors whose product simply looks more trustworthy."
UI + UX Redesign · Convention-Safe
⏱ 5–6 weeks"Our interface needs real work — but we can't afford to disorient the users we already have."
Retention & Onboarding · Full User Flow Redesign
⏱ 10–12 weeks"Users arrive, explore, and disappear before the product clicks for them."
Custom Scope · Combo Pricing · Ongoing Partnership
If you need to combine elements from two packages, discuss funding options, or set up an ongoing UX partnership, this is the conversation to have. Scoped to your situation, no surprises.
How we work, what to expect, and what makes us different.
A visual refresh (Luster Update) changes how your product looks without touching how it works — same flows, same structure, new design language. A full UX redesign (Luster Boost or Flow) changes how the product works: how users navigate, where friction lives, how information is structured. If your users are getting lost or dropping off, a visual refresh won't fix it. If your product works fine but looks dated, a full redesign is overkill. The discovery call is specifically to figure out which one applies to your situation.
This is the right question to be asking. The risk with any redesign of a live product is breaking habits users have already built — even good changes can feel wrong if they land in the wrong place or move something people rely on. Convention mapping is how we manage that: before we change anything, we document which patterns your users depend on and treat them as constraints, not suggestions. The goal is improvement that feels natural, not improvement that requires relearning.
The discovery call is where we get what we need — your product, your users, the friction points you already know about, and the ones you suspect. From there we produce a scoped proposal: which package fits, what the deliverables are, timeline, and cost. No open-ended retainer, no evolving scope. You know exactly what you're getting before you commit to anything.
For Luster Boost and Flow engagements, we define success metrics before we start — drop-off rate, task completion, time-to-value, conversion at key steps — so there's a clear baseline to measure against after launch. Luster Flow includes a measurement framework as a deliverable, so your team can track improvement over time without us. We don't consider an engagement successful because the designs look good. We consider it successful because the numbers moved.
We run async by default — milestone-based design reviews and structured check-ins rather than daily standups. You'll need one stakeholder available for feedback rounds at key milestones. We're built for teams with real work to do, not teams who want to co-design every screen.
Most failed redesigns fail for one of two reasons: the problem was aesthetic when it was actually structural, or the problem was structural but the solution disrupted existing users so much that adoption collapsed. Tell us what you tried and what happened — that context is exactly what shapes how we approach your situation differently. A discovery call is the right place to have that conversation.
Yes. Our case studies include a municipal planning simulation (Citisketch), an archaeological field recording tool for tablet and web (Stratum), a mobile AR research-library game with the University of Oxford (Sefira), and a public-science mobile app for the UNB Art Centre (H2O: An Ocean of Science). The common thread isn't the industry — it's complexity. If your product handles dense information, multi-step workflows, or users who need to make decisions under pressure, that's the kind of problem we're built for.
Every month your interface has friction is a month of drop-offs, lost conversions, and users who left before your product had the chance to click for them.
30 minutes, no cost. You describe your situation, we tell you which package fits and why — no pressure. You'll leave with a clear picture of where your UX is costing you, whether or not you move forward.
During the audit phase of any engagement, if we can't identify at least three high-impact friction points in your product, we don't charge for the audit.