Dufrain

Dufrain's platform already had strong capabilities: a GDPR compliance scanning system and backend processes for handling large, structured datasets. These tools did important work in assessing regulatory risk and helping organisations manage data compliance. But Dufrain lacked the user-experience design and frontend engineering capacity to present those capabilities in a way that felt approachable for the people who actually had to use them day to day.

We embedded as the design and frontend partner with a clear goal: turn the backend systems into tools that clients could use confidently and efficiently. Working in two-weekly iterations alongside Dufrain's team kept the loop tight between the data-engineering side and the user-facing side.

• Designed a GDPR compliance scanning interface that made sense to non-specialists
• Built a Subject Access Request portal that simplified data-request workflows
• Wired the React frontend against the existing Python-based backend APIs
• Stood up a shared component library so future Dufrain products share the same baseline

How we approached it

The work was about translation. Dufrain's data engineers knew exactly what the backend could do; the gap was in making that capability accessible to non-specialist clients. We treated each interface as a deliberate piece of communication rather than a wrapper around an API, and let the engineering team focus on the data side while we owned the front-end and UX. Two-weekly iterations and embedded delivery meant decisions could be tested with Dufrain's clients quickly.

Transforming the experience

Users had previously interacted indirectly with backend systems, or relied on internal experts to interpret outputs. The new interfaces let clients work directly with the analytics through clear, guided workflows. That shifted Dufrain from selling capability to selling product. The underlying engineering did exactly the same job, but it was now presented in a way that did not need a specialist to translate.