Case study
This portfolio site isn't just a place to show work. It's a governed artifact — built the same way I build for clients: name the symptom, name the force, lock the decision, ship the page.
01 — Symptom
A site can look finished while the real decisions live only in memory.
Typography picked ad hoc. CTAs patched section by section. Category colors that run out before the third tag. Visitors feel the drift even when they can't name it.
Meaning leaks first.
BDR-000502 — Force
The site teaches a diagnostic framework — but the design choices weren't locked in a traceable system.
Signal Loss — cross-cutting with governance
"Something keeps slipping between strategy and execution. I can't tell where the disconnect is."
Intent lived in conversation. Execution lived in CSS. Nothing held the two together — so every tweak risked becoming a new local rule.
Signal Loss names that seam. The fix isn't more polish. It's governed provenance — written decisions that say what code is allowed to change, and what was ruled out.
BDR-000403 — Decision
Symptom → force → decision → artifact. The decision is the step most sites skip.
Typography migration to Instrument Sans body and Instrument Serif accent — editorial voice without flattening UI metadata.
Three-force IA with Work before About — evidence and taxonomy precede bio and credentials.
Self-diagnosis inquiry (A/B/C/D) instead of a generic contact form — diagnostic frame through conversion.
Consolidated stylesheet — field guide and homepage share tokens in one style.css, scoped by body class.
Public design-system catalog and this case-study page — footer discovery, one-line provenance on public surfaces.
Layered plain-language readability on the field guide and this page — diagnostic voice without jargon walls.
Debt stays visible: no homepage case study tagged Complexity Drag yet (BDR-0012). Locked BDRs record reality — they don't pretend the site is finished.
BDR-001804 — Artifact
Each link is a production page that points back to locked decisions.
A locked BDR with zero live pages is still a hypothesis. These pages close that gap.
Offer
Sightline
Fixed-scope diagnostic engagement — embedded chain, scope sketch, links to samples (BDR-0030).
Portfolio
Home
Forces, work tagged by force, self-diagnosis inquiry — BDR-0004 through 0007.
Field guide
Seam
Print-oriented diagnostic document — layered readability per BDR-0017.
Catalog
Design System
Tokens, components, patterns, and locked-BDR provenance index — BDR-0010.
Deliverable
Sample Verdict
Boone Supported Living — maintenance requests failing silently; convergent sample (BDR-0024 · BDR-0031).
Deliverable
MCA Assessment
Competing hypotheses, bounded assessment, known ambiguity — no forced winner (BDR-0029).
Narrative
This page
Symptom → force → decision → artifact — with a plain-language BDR definition.
05 — Invitation
You don't need the full framework to start. You need to name what feels wrong.
I work best with organizations that sense the disconnect but can't pinpoint the seam. The inquiry on the homepage is a working example: pick the force that sounds closest, or say you're not sure yet. Both are valid entry points.
BDR-0006