Who we are
Ket Lai was founded and is operated by James Stewart, a creative technologist who's been working with the web since the mid 90s. He was joined in early 2010 by James Weiner, a designer with years of experience working in the music and publishing industries. Believing in keeping things simple and flexible, James and James form a small core staff, but draw on the assistance and expertise of a number of seasoned collaborators to ensure that clients get access to the experience they need.
What we do
Our primary business lies in helping clients determine how the web can assist with meeting their goals and what they in turn can contribute to the web, and implementing appropriate responses. Sometimes that means helping make use of existing tools, but usually we build custom web applications. Ruby on Rails and merb (in use for this site) are our preferred tools, but we've used a host of others, including the drupal CMS so popular in the NGO world and the wordpress and textpattern blogging engines.
We stay tuned in to what's happening on the web, and strive to adhere to best practices. Our tremendous enthusiasm for the web means we've usually got something to contribute when you try to identify how the latest buzz tool or site might interact with what you're doing.
How we work
We try to stay flexible, which partly means adapting our process to your needs and capacity, and partly means bringing our expertise of web development to bear and starting with solid research and many questions.
We like to start with simple prototypes that are built out as you use them and identify what they're like in practice (rather than simply on paper or in photoshop). We write tests for our code so that it's robust and easy to change. We use version control so that it's simple to step back through changes. And we rely on a network of our peers to make sure you're getting up to date knowledge.
If you're interested in process, it's usually best to get in touch with a quick summary of what you're trying to do, and we can take it from there.
Contact us
- Email james@ketlai.co.uk