Orbit
- UX/UI design
- Responsive web design
- Performance engineering
- Remote engagement
- 9 weeks
Orbit sells direct to consumers in markets where a mid-range phone on a slow connection is the norm. The storefront was beautiful on a design studio’s hardware and unusable on the hardware its customers own.
Performance was the brief, not a phase at the end. We agreed a byte budget in week one and every design decision was checked against it before it reached a pull request.
A storefront that paints before the hero
Core Web Vitals inside budget
A checkout with fewer dead ends
Paint before the hero
The page is readable and navigable before the hero image has decided whether it is loading. Text, layout and the primary action are in the first response; everything decorative arrives after and never shifts what is already on screen.
Inside the budget
Core Web Vitals are a build-time check rather than a monthly report. A change that busts the budget fails the pipeline, which is the only version of a performance culture that survives a deadline.
A checkout with fewer dead ends
Every error the old checkout could produce was catalogued, and the ones with no way forward were designed out rather than reworded. The remainder tell the customer what to do next.
Sample content
Agreeing a byte budget in week one meant performance was never a negotiation later. Every design review had the number in it.
Ken Nakashima
