Precise by nature.
Virgo Digital is a software studio based in Michigan. We design and build apps, websites, and data tools for small businesses, nonprofits, and founders, and we build our own products too.
Design is where the problem gets solved.
Most software problems aren't technical. Someone's day has a slow, confusing, or manual step in it, and the product exists to remove that step. So we start there, with the people who feel the problem, and design outward from what they need to do.
Start with the problem.
Before any screens, we learn what's actually slow or frustrating today, who feels it, and what a good day looks like without it. That understanding becomes the brief, not a feature list.
Map how people move.
We sketch the flows first: how someone gets from opening the app to done, with the fewest decisions in between. Only then do the screens get designed around those paths.
Test before you build.
Designs go in front of real users while they're still drawings. Changes are cheap at that point, and you approve every screen before code is written.
Practical beats impressive.
Every element has to earn its place. If a feature doesn't make the job easier, it doesn't ship. The details matter too, like a timer that knows which dish it belongs to.
What goes into it
- Research
- Conversations with the people who'll use it, and a close look at how the job gets done today.
- Flows
- The paths through the product, drawn before any screen, with the fewest steps to done.
- Prototypes
- Clickable designs you can try and approve before a line of code is written.
- Accessibility
- Keyboard, screen readers, contrast, and motion settings, built in from the first screen.
- Systems
- The backend, the database, and the data designed alongside the interface, so the product can grow without a rewrite.
- Measurement
- After launch, we look at what people actually do and adjust, instead of guessing.
In practice
We use the same approach on our own product.
Cooklook, our recipe app, started from one frustration: looking up a recipe shouldn't be the hardest part of cooking. Every decision in it, from one step per screen to timers that name their dish, came from watching how people actually cook. It's the clearest example of how we work.
Read the case study
What you can count on
You own everything.
Your code, your accounts, your plan. Nothing is held hostage.
Plain English.
If we use a technical term, we'll tell you what it means for you.
Honest about status.
If something's in development, we say so.
Behind the studio
Joe Dillon
Founder
Joe started Virgo Digital to be the kind of studio he'd want to hire, where the person you talk to is the person building your product.
Before this, he worked with the analytics and A&R team at Island Records, building data tools to track chart trends and emerging artists. He designed and built Cooklook, a native iOS app, from the first sketch to the backend.
Why Virgo
Virgo is Joe's sign. It also happens to describe how we work: precise, practical, and a little obsessive about details.
Have something in mind? Tell us what you're building.