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Design   Development   Hosting

People decide
in milliseconds.

I design for that.

Revenue 3-4x. Same product. Different perception.

Traffic comes in. Sales don’t. The product isn’t the problem.

Nobody is thinking
about your website.

Your visitors are filtering and deciding before conscious thought kicks in.

50 milliseconds. That’s all the brain needs to form a judgment (Lindgaard et al., 2006). Gut reactions they can’t explain are deciding whether they stay or leave.

I built a methodology around that gap. Five layers between a visitor and a conversion. Miss one and the rest don’t matter.

Cognitive Load × First Impression × Trust × Behavior × Action = Decision
Read how it works →
Results

The receipts.

Revenue 3x

Simply Smart Home

Simply Smart Home made digital photo frames. Good product, steady sales. But “digital photo frame” sounds like a gadget from 2009.

I repositioned them as smart home décor. New brand system, new packaging, new web presence. The whole surface area. Same hardware inside.

Revenue tripled within the year. The partnership lasted four years. Disney licensed the brand.

“Stefan designed the brand, the packaging, and the product. Everything people see.”
Simply Smart Home
Revenue 4x

Vacuum Sealers Unlimited. Ten years, same site. Incremental optimization, no redesign.

“The website Stefan built me helped put my 3 boys through college.”
Owner, Vacuum Sealers Unlimited
50% → 75%

Online ticket sales at iO Theater. New booking experience for a 40-year Chicago improv institution.

“Stefan made our site in half the time, and even better looking than the agency we hired before him.”
Managing Director, iO Theater

Retail & licensing

Costco Walmart Disney Shark Tank Target Amazon The Home Depot Lowe's

Origin

I figured this out
in a nightclub.

Stefan Kovalik, founder of Aurochs

~300 people on a busy night in Santa Barbara. Same last call song, house lights slam on, and I’m barking at people to leave. A sour note saying “get out” on an otherwise good time. Always felt off to me.

So I started walking tables at 1:10. “Hey, last call’s coming up. Good time to grab any drinks you want. Thanks for coming out tonight.” No urgency. Just information, a suggestion, and a thank you.

By 1:30, people were saying goodnight and heading for the door on their own. Happier than the old way ever got them. Bar sales went up in those last 20 minutes, and we closed 30 minutes earlier than usual.

Right information, right time, right tone, and people cooperated on their own. A psychology degree from UCSB gave me the language. Fifteen years of building websites gave me the laboratory. That pattern became Perception-First Design™.

What I build

Cognograph

What comes after Claude Design, and what Figma for LLMs looks like.

Spatial AI workflow canvas. 4 provisional patents. Open source under AGPL-3.0 + Defensive Patent Pledge.

cognograph.app → github.com/skovalik/cognograph →

Perception-First Design™

Automated design thinking. Evaluate and generate with “will this make sense?” logic.

5-layer methodology. ~100 peer-reviewed citations. Open-source Claude Code skill + corpus-driven evals engine.

github.com/skovalik/perception-first-design →

Make Me Think

A 12-chapter book on Perception-First Design.

Free PDF + EPUB. Counterpoint to Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think.

aurochs.agency/writing/make-me-think →

Services

I ship in weeks what agencies
quote in months.

Design, development, and hosting. One person, no overhead. You pay for the work, not the org chart.

Growth Infrastructure

$800/mo

Your site becomes my job.
And I pick up the phone.

Enterprise-grade hosting, sub-second load times, and security that’s always on. When something needs attention, I handle it before you notice.

  • Hosting + daily backups
  • Security monitoring + updates
  • Performance optimization
  • Same-day response, 7 days

Month-to-month after first year. Included with all site builds.

Not sure which tier? Don’t worry about it. See full service details →

Start with a conversation. I’ll look at your site and tell you what I find. We’ll figure out if this is a fit.

Let’s talk →

Stefan Kovalik   San Francisco

Start with what’s not working.

Send the URL. I’ll look at it and share what I find. No pitch, just an honest read. We’ll figure out if it makes sense to work together.

Weekday response within 48 hours.

I have room right now.