Focus
Duration
Outcome
Performance remains weak or fragile.
Previous redesigns, experiments or content changes have not resolved it.
Customers arrive with expectations the experience cannot meet.
The story they encountered before arrival does not survive contact with the actual offer.
Search, AI summaries, reviews and third parties describe the organisation differently.
There is no single stable version for people or machines to trust.
Teams disagree about the cause.
The interface keeps changing while the underlying explanation remains unresolved.
What is materially and operationally true. The actual offer, price, policies, delivery, constraints and outcomes the organisation can genuinely support.
What the wider world says and repeats. Search results, reviews, comparison sites, directories, partner content, public discussion and other sources that shape the story before arrival.
What machines appear able to infer. How search systems, AI summaries and other machine-mediated surfaces identify, describe, compare and recommend the organisation or offer.
What people come to believe. The expectations, doubts, assumptions, risks and decision criteria carried into the experience.
Where the story is tested. The pages, journeys, interactions and communications that either confirm those expectations or expose the contradictions underneath them.
We agree the question, audience, offer, scope and available evidence. The aim is to establish exactly what is being investigated and what sits outside the diagnostic.
Examine the relevant evidence across the five Corpus layers.
We identify where the evidence agrees, where it conflicts and where important information is missing.
Turn the findings into a prioritised course of action.
A concise view of how Reality, Corpus, Model, Human and Interface interact across the selected decision environment.
It shows where the layers agree, where they contradict one another, and where the visible problem begins.
A structured assessment across:
Each area is assessed using the evidence available, with uncertainty shown rather than quietly filled with confident nonsense.
A clear record of the material places where:
Each finding includes the supporting evidence, likely consequence, confidence and required response.
A sequenced action plan organised into:
It also identifies:
A structured working session used to verify findings, resolve factual disputes, agree priorities and assign ownership.
After the session, the final diagnostic pack records:
That usually means:
The symptom, uncertainty or recurring question that has made the organisation stop trusting its current explanation.
Relevant research, analytics, customer feedback, policies, operational information, previous work and other available evidence.
Send it in the form it already exists. There is no need to create new reports or polish conflicting material before we see it.
People who understand different parts of the decision environment, such as:
We are looking for useful knowledge, not a ceremonial steering committee.
Technical, legal, operational, commercial or organisational limits that affect what can genuinely change.
Someone who can help with access, verify the current position and keep decisions moving.
Evidence is often fragmented across teams, systems and personal folders.
Finding where it lives, deciding what can be trusted and identifying where sources disagree are part of the diagnostic—not homework the client must finish before we begin.
Each diagnostic focuses on:
A useful framing is: How does [audience] discover, understand and decide whether to choose [offer]?
Related products, audiences or journeys may appear in the evidence, but they do not automatically become part of the engagement.
A typical diagnostic runs for three to four weeks.
The exact timing depends on:
The agreed timeframe is confirmed before work begins.
Following the initial conversation, Corpus provides a clear scope, timeframe and fixed fee.
The work does not silently expand once underway.
Where evidence reveals a separate problem outside the agreed decision environment, it is recorded and discussed rather than quietly absorbed into the engagement.
The diagnostic begins with the evidence the organisation already holds.
New customer research, additional measurement or specialist analysis is recommended only where a material question cannot be answered responsibly without it.
Any new research is separately scoped.
The standard diagnostic identifies:
It does not automatically include:
Follow-on work is separately scoped where it is genuinely useful.
The diagnostic does not guarantee:
Its purpose is to replace competing explanations with a stronger evidence base and a clearer set of decisions.
In some cases, the findings and revival protocol are enough for the organisation to proceed independently.
The client may already have the people, systems and authority required to:
Corpus can step away once the diagnosis and decisions are clear.
Where the diagnostic identifies work that requires specialist support, a separate engagement may be useful.
This could include:
Any follow-on work is scoped separately, with its own purpose, boundaries, timeframe and fee.
Sometimes the most responsible outcome is to pause.
The diagnostic may establish that:
In that case, the next step is a focused investigation rather than immediate implementation.
The evidence may show that the visible issue is limited, tolerable or not worth the cost of intervention.
That is also a valid outcome.
The diagnostic succeeds when it supports a better decision—not when it creates more work.
You do not need to know whether the problem is upstream, on-site or both.
You do not need a finished brief.
You do not need every team to agree on the cause.
The first conversation is used to understand:
If the Corpus Diagnostic is the right fit, you will receive a clear scope, timeframe and fixed fee before any work begins.
If it is not, we will say so.
