Formise is a lab. We catch what grates, test it cheaply, and build what earns being built.
The observations rarely come out of a meeting about new ideas. They show up in the middle of other work: something puts up more resistance than it should, someone solves the same thing by hand for the third time, a tool is missing where everyone assumed it existed.
Most of them stay notes. Here they get direction, form and a build. What holds up then gets to stand on its own.
In short: a place where ideas get to cost a little, break, and sometimes become companies.
Most ideas die as notes. Not because they are bad, but because nobody has anywhere to put them.
Formise is the place where they get room. An observation is allowed to cost a little, get a build and break without anything else being at stake. What holds gets to grow. What does not gets to die cheaply and early.
The observations come out of work, often out of client work at Memorise, where the same people sit. But the lab does not exist because the agency lacks room for them. It exists because we want to build and own what we ourselves see a need for, and that takes a space where it can be done for real.
The word lab can sound like an excuse to avoid deciding. Here it means the opposite: an idea is tested properly before anyone bets on it.
And we own what we build. Formise is not a consultancy drawing for other people. When something turns out well it belongs to us, and when something breaks it is ours that breaks. That is the whole point of having a lab.
The testing follows an order, and it looks the same every time. Step by step, it is on the process page.
The fastest way to know whether something holds is to use it yourself, for real, where it shows when it does not work.
memorise.se was built here. An agency selling technical SEO, performance and measurability can hardly run a slow site with holes in its tracking, and that site is reviewed by exactly the people who know the craft best. The site you are reading this on was built the same way, for the same reason.
One build has already left the lab. Dynamic SEO runs as its own company today, and what that says about the model is under About.
Got an observation that won't leave you alone?