The 2-week design and development partner Sprint

You've got three browser tabs open. Each one has a quote from a different design studio. One's a fixed project price. One's a monthly retainer. The third is a "discovery phase" that costs nearly as much as the others but produces a deck, not designs. A founder you know hired someone and the work never quite fit the product. You're about to get on a call with us, and you're thinking: how would I even know if Clearly is any good before I commit to a monthly plan?

That's the right question. The Sprint exists to answer it.

A 2-week Sprint costs $3,750. It's one focused workstream: a feature, a design system, or a prototype your team can click through and hand to engineering. We work inside your existing product, not a blank file. By day 14, you have something concrete to judge, and a much clearer sense of whether working together makes sense. The live rate and monthly plans are on pricing.

Two ways teams use a Sprint

Most teams come to us one of two ways.

The first is as a paid trial. You want to see how we work before committing to a monthly plan. That's fair, and I'd encourage you to keep the trial paid and short. A paid engagement gets real attention on both sides. Unpaid "test" projects drift. Before we kick off, write down, plainly, how you'll judge the Sprint. Is the prototype complete enough for engineering to build from? Are the edge cases covered? Does the work fit inside your existing design system? Having a clear standard up front means you're not guessing at the end.

The second is as a diagnostic. Some teams know a bigger piece of work is coming: a full website migration, a new onboarding flow, a design system that needs rebuilding before the next product release. A single Sprint is a good way to map that work, scope the follow-on Sprints, and surface the decisions that need to get made before design can move. You spend two weeks getting clear on the problem, then run subsequent Sprints to do the actual work. If the library itself is the mess, the diagnostic might point you at a design system audit before you redesign screens.

Either way, the Sprint has a defined scope and a deliverable. That scope is agreed before we start. When the slice is already chosen, the method inside the Sprint is prototype-first discovery.

What do the first two weeks look like?

We don't open a blank Figma file. We ask for access to your existing library, your design system if you have one, and enough of a read on your codebase to understand what's already been established.

The first few days are mostly about orientation. What tokens are in use? What component patterns are consistent, and where are the gaps? Getting that picture right at the start saves a lot of correction later. Work that ignores your existing system creates more problems than it solves.

If your design system is incomplete or inconsistent (most are), we work with what's there. We're not trying to redesign your foundations in week one. We're trying to produce output your engineers can actually use, inside the system they're already building from. The middle of the Sprint is heads-down design on the agreed scope. By the end of week two, the flow is clickable, the states are named, and the notes explain the calls we made.

How do you work with our engineering team?

Good handoff doesn't happen in a meeting. It happens in the file.

When designs are ready for engineering, your team gets components with named states, design tokens mapped to your system, and a clickable prototype that shows the full flow. Not a static screenshot of the happy path. The full flow, including what happens when the list is empty, when the request fails, and when the user doesn't have permission to see what they clicked on.

Questions come up during a build. Engineers find edge cases designers didn't anticipate. We answer those in Slack, in writing, with a direct reference to the specific frame in Figma. That's more useful than scheduling a thirty-minute call to answer a three-sentence question. Your engineers keep building; we keep the thread moving.

Weekly progress updates go out as Looms, so there are no surprises at day 14.

What you have at day 14

At the end of the Sprint, you have three things.

The designs or prototype itself: a complete, clickable flow your engineers can build from. The decisions written down: why we took one approach over another, what we considered and ruled out. And a clear picture of what comes next, whether that's a follow-on Sprint, a monthly plan, or a pause.

Nothing at the end of a Sprint should feel like a mystery. Open the Figma file, walk through the prototype, read the notes. You should understand exactly what was built and why.

Judge the work before you commit

If you're a founder without a design background, here's how I'd evaluate a design studio's output before signing anything.

Start with case studies. Look past the hero shots. Find the ones that show full flows: multi-step forms, dashboard states, onboarding sequences. If a studio's portfolio is mostly polished single screens, that tells you something. Good product design lives in the transitions, the edge cases, the states your users hit when things go wrong.

Then judge the Sprint deliverable the same way. Are the flows complete end to end? Does the prototype cover the states that usually get skipped: empty states, error states, loading states, permission and role-based variations? Would your engineers know exactly what to build?

I've had calls where a founder opens a prototype from a previous studio and we walk through it together. We'll get three screens in and find the empty state is missing entirely. The components are clean. It looks finished. But no one thought through what the table looks like when there's no data yet. That's not a small gap. It's the kind of thing that turns into a product decision mid-build, and engineers shouldn't be making it unilaterally.

If the first Sprint deliverable doesn't hold up to that kind of inspection, you stop there. That's exactly the point of starting with a Sprint.

Bigger work as back-to-back Sprints

Fixed project prices are harder to scope accurately than they look. Something always changes mid-project, and then you're negotiating a change order. The tradeoff between fixed quotes and retainers is its own decision; fixed-price vs retainer for SaaS design walks through it without pretending one shape fits every team.

Sprints are easier to manage because each one has a defined scope and a concrete deliverable. At the end of each Sprint, you decide what comes next. You can run another Sprint, pause, or move into a monthly plan.

Our monthly plans are Standard at $4,995 per month (one workstream at a time) or Advanced at $7,495 per month (two workstreams, with tighter loops with your engineering team). Those are the only plans we offer. No other prices, no fixed project engagements. See pricing for the full breakdown.

Running back-to-back Sprints also gives you more flexibility than a long fixed project. If priorities shift between Sprint two and Sprint three, you adjust scope. You're not locked into a statement of work written four months earlier.

Who this isn't for

If you're still pre-launch and figuring out the product, a Sprint probably isn't the right fit yet. We work best when there's an existing product, an engineering team already shipping, and a specific problem worth solving properly.

We're also not the right fit if you're looking for a template you can hand to an in-house designer later. What we produce is designed specifically for your product, your design system, and your stack. It's not a starting point for someone else to finish.

The Sprint is for funded SaaS teams with engineers who are already building and a design problem they need to get right.

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