We help organisations use digital media.
Our speciality is mission-critical projects and our mantra: best long-term value for our clients.
Overview
Cogapp serves clients in the museums, culture, media, sports, charity, government and commercial sectors. We operate from a headquarters in Brighton and an office in New York.
Founded in 1985, we have worked with almost every digital media technology from the floppy disk to the iPad. Current projects include websites, interactive installations and mobile apps.
As well as delivering projects we also advise, design, consult and provide maintenance and operating services.
Many companies do similar things. What sets us apart is our experience of delivering large-scale mission-critical projects for prominent organisations.
Our ethos
Clients and their communities are at the heart of our practice. Whatever we do our aim is to produce work that is well-conceived and beautifully executed; work that will enrich the lives of the people who use it and create exceptional long-term value for our clients.
To make this possible, Cogapp provides a complete service. We have experienced in-house teams for production, design, technology and user experience. Our in-house skills cover the vast majority of our clients' requirements, but where needed we can call on an extensive network of associates.
Our clients
Cogapp's clients include prominent public-facing organisations on both sides of the Atlantic, notably the British Museum, the BBC, MoMA, Manchester United, Arts Council England, London 2012, Dorling Kindersley, the Home Office, the Children's Society, Prudential and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Our team
The Cogapp team currently features around 40 friendly professional staff who share more than 200 years of high-level experience. Our Team section has a complete set of staff profiles.
User-centred design
User-centred design is key to our work and is literally at the heart of our business. Our in-house user testing facilities are the centrepiece of our office layout. This reduces cost for our clients and helps us make sure that everything we produce gets maximum benefit from user insight.
Innovation
Innovation is a fact of life for anyone working in digital media. Cogapp has managed to stay in the vanguard of technology over more than twenty five years; an achievement we strive to maintain by innovating in all aspects of our work; in design, technology and methods of working. For evidence of this commitment see our portfolio and our blog.
Long-term engagement
Working for long-term value, we are keenly aware of the importance of maintaining and improving digital products over time. So we provide management, maintenance and operations services indefinitely after a project launch. Several of our client relationships go back over a decade.
Technology choices
In terms of technology choices, what our clients need is what matters to us. Every organisation starts with a different IT environment and different preferences. So our technology recommendations reflect those different needs. We have in-depth experience across a wide range of digital media technologies including Linux and .NET/Windows platforms, open-source and commercial products. In terms of specific products, we are currently working happily with Sitecore, Drupal, ModX, Plone, Solr, Seadragon, Tessitura, TMS, Django, Python, C#, Objective-C and many more.
Accolades and awards
Our work has won numerous awards. We were recently selected as one of the top 10 interactive design agencies by Design Week and listed as 'Ones to Watch' by New Media Age.
Next steps
To find out more about us, including our design and technical capabilities and our capacity for innovation, please see our portfolio and our blog.
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User Experience
Our rigorous and practical approach to user research puts your audience at the heart of what we do. We combine user testing, ethnographic research, information architecture and interaction design techniques, all informed by practical experience delivering working systems.
The result is a process that ensures you get measurably better results. We have an observation studio in our office and a mobile studio for doing work on client sites. We also have regular arrangements with commercial testing labs in London and New York. Our recent research and thinking on user experience can be seen on our blog.
Design
Our design ethos is simple: to embrace creative ideas that connect you to your audience. We do this by integrating creativity with innovative technology, helping you to articulate the values and spirit of your organisation. Our designers are multi-disciplined and widely experienced. They work on projects ranging from consultancy and identity through to websites and interactive installations. Please see our portfolio for some samples of their work.
Technology
We take an agnostic but passionate approach to technology. Our experience with many different languages, applications and platforms is combined with a never-ending search for new tools. This search is driven by our need to create ever more effective solutions for our clients and more compelling experiences for their users. We understand that the constraints that are most important are often not technical but social, and we are adept at choosing and combining technologies to meet our clients' needs.
Production
Cogapp's projects are managed within the framework of our creative methodology. This has been honed over more than twenty years of practice on large-scale projects. It is engaging, user-centric and easy to understand. It is supported by a rich set of tools and common practices. Our well trained, PRINCE2-certified, project managers work with clients, using this methodology, to find innovative approaches that make the best use of all available assets and resources. Our mission is to deliver results that meet all the constraints of time, budget and process, that are a joy to look at, a pleasure to use and a great source of long-term value.