Questions
The things people ask before they write.
Short answers, so the first conversation can be about the problem.
Working together
- What happens after I get in touch?
- I reply within one working day. If it sounds like something I should take on, we talk for thirty minutes — you can book that directly — and I follow up in writing with what I would do, how long it would take, and what it would cost. No proposal deck.
- Do I need a brief?
- No. A paragraph on what you are trying to make, roughly when, and who it is for is enough. The most useful thing you can add is what people are doing today instead, and why that is not working.
- How long does an engagement take?
- Advisory work runs two to eight weeks, research and audits three to six, and embedded work two to six months. Two engagements come in a fixed shape: a two-week decision audit and a six-week working prototype, both described on the studio page.
- Do you work on-site?
- Yes. The practice is based in Abu Dhabi; on-site days in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah are normal, and the rest is remote. Elsewhere in the GCC is a conversation, not a problem.
- What if the job is bigger than one person?
- It depends on the job. By default I lead and your own team builds and owns the result — that is usually the right outcome anyway, because the product has to live with them. When there is no team to hand to, I bring in independents I have worked with before, contracted for that engagement, and I stay accountable for the whole.
- Do you build, or only design?
- I build far enough to find out whether the idea holds — a working version people can use, not a slide deck arguing that it would work. Production engineering is done with your engineers or with people I bring in; either way I stay through the launch.
Money and paper
- How do you charge?
- Per engagement, quoted after the first conversation. Fixed shape and fixed price wherever the work allows it; a day rate for embedded work. There are no prices on this site because the honest number depends on the problem.
- Who am I contracting with?
- Werk Studios LLC, licensed by Sharjah Media City (Shams), licence no. 2647116.01. Invoices come from the company, in AED by default; USD or EUR is possible. The company is not VAT registered, so no VAT is added.
- Who owns the work?
- You do. Everything produced for the engagement — research, designs, prototypes, code — is assigned to you once the invoices are settled. I keep the right to describe the work at the abstraction level you approve, which for most clients means no name and no screens.
- Will you sign our NDA?
- Yes, before any detail is shared, on your paper or mine. Most of the work on this site is under NDA already, which is why the case studies show the shape of each problem rather than its screens.
Working with government and sovereign entities
- How do we verify the company?
- The licence number is on every page of this site and on the legal page with the formation number, dates and registered address. Shams can confirm the licence directly; a copy of the trade licence and the other supplier-onboarding documents are available on request.
- Where does our data live?
- With you. I do not need production data to start, and most of the early work — watching the work, mapping decisions — produces no client data at all. When the work does touch your data or systems, it happens in your environment, under your policies, and nothing about it appears on this site or anywhere else.
- Can the work be shown afterwards?
- Only what you approve. The default for government and sovereign work is no client name, no data, no screens — the case studies here are abstract reconstructions for exactly that reason. If you would rather nothing appear at all, nothing will.
- Have you done this kind of work before?
- Yes — UAE government, sovereign-linked and enterprise programmes in food security, ports and logistics, automotive and public-sector data, described on the work page at the level confidentiality allows.