← Case Studies

Closing the Design-to-Code Gap

Cut design-to-engineering back-and-forth to near zero and reduced spec-to-deploy time by roughly 10x — removing a cost center from the delivery chain without adding engineering headcount.


Level 5 Frontier Capability Team: 6 people Design engineering / process standardization Culture: Start-up PHA

Business risk

Design handoff to engineering created recurring back-and-forth — specs misread, technical constraints discovered late, iteration bottlenecked by translation loss between design and code.

Intervention

Built front-end coding fluency directly into the design function (vibecoding), closing the Skeleton-to-Surface gap the Elements of UX framework identifies as a common source of rework. Design output is now technically pre-validated before it reaches engineering.

Business outcome

Cut design-to-engineering back-and-forth to near zero and reduced spec-to-deploy time by roughly 10x — removing a cost center from the delivery chain without adding engineering headcount.