Excited

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and founder of Ravel, based in Washington State in the US. We uncover data for B2B sales and marketing teams.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Excited?

We brought in Excited to help us with UX/UI design.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement? 

We spent a lot of time developing the backend of our product. Functionally, it was very good, but we had a nonexistent frontend. Our engineers excel at their craft but lack design skills. Before working with Excited, we sent our clients giant CSV files. We wanted to build a web app and needed to start by doing the design. To assist us and create a polished client-facing layer for our data set, we brought in Excited.

We didn’t have a starting place. We gave them some very light ideas and what I believed to be our user stories about different groups that we sell to and gave them the pitch deck that we use with investors and background on the company and the problems we’re solving. Excited conducted interviews with our customers and really started from the ground up.

They share everything with me in Figma. The design for the web app is almost complete, and the engineers will start building it shortly. 

What is the team composition?

I work with two people from the team. 

Are there any employees from the service provider's team that you would like to give a shout-out to in this review?

Oleksandr (Design Director & Co-Founder) is involved in several projects. Oleh (Product Designer) is the primary designer assigned to our project. They’ve both been great to work with. 

How did you come to work with Excited?

Oleksandr reached out to me on LinkedIn.

How much have you invested in them?

We're spending $7,000 per month. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with Excited in May 2023, and it's ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The website will likely be released in the next week or two. We haven’t released the web app yet; no one has seen it other than our clients in the interviews. All clients expressed excitement during the initial interviews and follow-up feedback sessions. We certainly feel the excitement, but it’s too early to see the impact on sales and marketing. 

How did Excited perform from a project management standpoint?

We work very well together. It’s a very iterative process, and they work fast. We communicate via a Slack channel almost daily. The Excited team always provides us with updates in addition to the weekly check-in meetings. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They put out a very high-quality product. I appreciate the time and effort they put into what they show me and their openness to feedback. When presented with two design options, I can express my dislike without offending them. I often provide additional insights about our customers or the problem we're trying to solve. Despite their invested time and attachment to their work, they're able to take a step back and redesign something. This ability is truly impressive.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’m thrilled with everything they’ve done. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It is crucial to establish a strong relationship with the Excited team, allowing them to provide constructive criticism and feel at ease in doing so. Ensuring open communication channels in both directions is essential, and providing reassurance to the team that they can express their opinions is very important.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO for an online web and mobile platform where users book and pay for water sport and non-water sport experiences.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Excited?

We needed the team at Excited to create very high-quality UX/UI designs in order to provide a compelling customer experience.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Excited provides UX/UI designs based upon the detailed briefing that we provide them. We give them the freedom to challenge our ideas and make suggestions in order to deliver the best designs. They used Figma. 

What is the team composition?

Excited has a team of two people.

How did you come to work with Excited?

Excited reached out to me through LinkedIn; they were passionate and excited about our project. I prefer working with individuals over agencies, but their team gave me the confidence that I needed to take the risk of working with them.

How much have you invested with them?

The project cost $12,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in April 2023, and the collaboration is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The project with Excited is going well. I believe we'll see the business results we’re looking for. We have plans to work with Excited on another project.

How did Excited perform from a project management standpoint?

Excited is a very professional company. They manage the project well and deliver on time and within budget. They’re very responsive and timely in their communication.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m impressed with how enthusiastic the Excited team is about their work. They care about my project and treat it as their own.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, they’re a great team.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I highly recommend working with Excited. If you really care about building a great product, Excited will be a great partner for you. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of Grafo AI, a web platform focusing on personalized and AI-driven email outreach.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Excited?

We were looking for a UI/UX designer, so we hired Excited.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Excited provided us with UI/UX design services to help us develop our platform. The team basically designed the entire platform themselves on Figma and provided us with a lot of design suggestions throughout the process; I simply provided them with a rough sketch, and they built upon it.

What is the team composition?

We worked with three teammates from Excited: a co-founder and two product designers. The co-founder was involved in every meeting and oversaw the entire project.

How did you come to work with Excited?

I posted a job offer on Upwork, and Excited responded. Then, I looked them up online just to fill the gap because they hadn’t had a review in two years. Then, we messaged back and forth and had our initial meeting within 10 hours of our initial engagement.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent a little over $5,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together in March 2023.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

We have a frontend developer working on implementing the designs delivered by Excited. His process has been a lot faster due to all the details they provided, which ultimately improved the scope and speed of frontend development. Excited did a great job at keeping everything organized and providing the frontend developer with everything he needed to deliver this platform.

How did Excited perform from a project management standpoint?

Excited’s project management was perfect. I didn’t have to manage them because they stood on top of everything and asked me questions when needed. We met two times per week. During those meetings, they showed us their work, and it was perfect every time. We used Slack and Zoom to communicate.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Excited’s main strength was that they intuitively understood what I was looking for. They were very communicative regarding updates, and they required almost no guidance or oversight. Moreover, they were extremely creative in things I hadn’t even thought about, and they came up with really impressive solutions.

I wouldn’t normally spend time talking to leave a review. However, I already left a review for Excited on Upwork, and the co-founder asked me if I would be willing to leave this review. They were so good that I agreed.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything Excited could have improved on.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Provide them with a mock-up of what you need, be very clear about your goals, and explain your business thoroughly.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of Mediaquest, a strategic management services company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Excited?

We needed help with UI/UX design for one of our clients.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Excited has helped us with UI/UX design based on a brief we gave them. Their team has taken care of the design, testing, and adjustment processes, using Figma as their main tool.

What is the team composition?

We mainly work with two members of Excited's team, including their COO and a UI/UX designer.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we've spent $25,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in December 2022, and the engagement is still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Excited has understood what we're trying to do, enabling them to provide valuable insights. Their team doesn't just take orders; they add value to our business through their feedback, so we're satisfied with their work. Overall, they've transformed our vision into a product that makes sense to us.

How did Excited perform from a project management standpoint?

Excited's team is responsive, punctual, and sticks to what they say they'll deliver. In addition, they're very professional with project management because they're very proactive and make weekly touchpoints. In terms of tools, we use monday.com and Google Meet.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Excited is quick and understanding our needs and capturing information from the briefs we give to them. Moreover, they're nice people and easy to work with.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don't think there's anything they can improve on.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Spend time upfront with the briefing. It will translate into faster execution.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a product owner for a fitness management platform; we provide CRM software to boutique fitness studios.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Excited?

We hired Excited for UX/UI design work.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Excited takes care of just about all of the wireframes using Figma. They also handle other design updates we’re trying to work on across the board, and work with several product owners within our organization. We’ve been collaborating on a scheduling app in addition to other items related to the CRM, like customer contacts, emails, and texting.

Our current platform is fairly complex, but they’ve assisted us with defining user personas in the past. For the most part, we’re currently using Excited for the modernization of the platform and to make it more user and mobile-friendly. Our platform is built on a very old framework using ASP.NET, so we’re working on reskinning it and rebuilding everything through React on the frontend. 

As we release features, we get customer feedback, and if any updates or changes need to be made, Excited updates the designs; this process is a bit like an agile delivery type where they’re helping us along the way. They also look at this feedback and conduct user interviews to determine if there’s a way to provide a better experience or flow for the customer. Excited works with our marketing team on any sort of updated branding that occurs.

What is the team composition?

We work with Oleksandr (Co-Founder & Design Director) and two other designers. 

How did you come to work with Excited?

They were already working with the company when I came on board a little over a year ago.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since December 2020, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

We think they’ve done a good job regarding the designs and what we’ve asked of them; they come back to us with viable and good designs for what we’re trying to accomplish. Overall, we feel it’s been a good partnership, and they’re a great company to work with. 

The team from Excited brings a lot of suggestions that we wouldn’t have come up with, and they have expertise on the UX side. They think outside the box to help us add value to what we’re trying to create for our customers. 

How did Excited perform from a project management standpoint?

We meet with them on a regular basis, and believe that they have a good understanding of what our expectations are. We communicate via Slack for the most part and have weekly digital calls. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The team is very responsive even though we’re in different time zones; they’re also good about prioritizing work and delivering it back in a timely fashion. Excited is very collaborative and always provides suggestions that speak to the customer's perspective. We don’t always have enough customer knowledge on our end, which is something that Excited brings to the table. They have enough knowledge surrounding the development process to know what is feasible, and they’re practical in that regard. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

There have been a few situations where they’ve added new designs when we didn’t ask for them. There’s only so much that we can do from a development side, and sometimes they add too much in terms of what we can feasibly do at that point in time with our resources. However, this isn’t really a negative reflection on them because we know they’re always looking for ways to improve everything. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

We’d recommend them to any other organization that’s looking to build out a CRM platform from scratch or redesign one. They bring in expertise as far as UX/UI design and customer experience, which is valuable.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

My company provides metering hardware and software to electric and water utilities.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Excited?

We hired Excited to redesign and also add new features to our utility management system.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I selected Excited after a very positive recommendation from a friend that worked with them on his software project.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

The project is a rather complicated one with many different facets. I was initially hesitant to work with a totally new designer due to the steep learning curve. I was forced to find a new designer because our old designer was no longer available and we needed to introduce new features. I The project started with a kick off meeting on May 5, 2022 where we discussed the project in detail and shared some of the old designs as well as some notes.

Excited immediately got to work sketching out the flow of the new features. Once we agreed on the full user requirements, they implemented the designs. The final product was far superior to our other designs and I therefore asked them to redesign the entire application to ensure uniformity.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

There is a team lead as well as two designers working on the project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Their work is of such high quality that we ended up asking them to redesign the entire application so a job that was meant to last a few weeks ended up becoming a much bigger multi month job. We have a very polished design with all elements carefully thought through. They have managed to present with simplicity very complicated ideas. The system is therefore extremely user friendly.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The work flow is extremely effective. We communicate over our dedicated slack channel and have meetings twice a week to discuss what has been done and to answer any questions. We also leave comments in Figma and receive a response rather quickly.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They are very dedicated to their work. They first understand the process and then ask many questions as they proceed. It is this profound understanding of a project that I find very impressive. I am also impressed by their punctuality. You can count on them when you need them.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

No there aren't.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of a startup in the sports industry. We’re developing a social media app.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Excited?

We wanted a world-class design, so we were looking for a company that specialized in design, not implementation. We had a design from another agency, but it wasn’t the best quality.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Initially, we showed the previous design to Excited’s team and gave them the brief. We discussed our vision, and they came back with a proposal. The whole process took about eight weeks; they used Figma for the design.

How did you come to work with Excited?

After a long search, I found Excited and reached out to them. We started by giving them our brief and discussing our idea.

How much have you invested in them?

We spent $12,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them from March–June 2022.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We tested user acceptance with potential customers, and the feedback was extremely positive.

How did Excited perform from a project management standpoint?

Overall, project management was good. A couple of things came up, but they were very flexible. We started with one designer, but he didn’t fulfill what we had in mind. They were welcoming when we said we didn’t like the quality and quickly shifted to another designer but didn’t charge any extra.

We had weekly meetings, which were fruitful and insightful. On the other hand, communication was excellent. They were very adaptive to our requirements. Usually, we communicated through Slack, email, Zoom, and Google Meet calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were very well prepared; the design surprised many people. Their work was very well crafted; they delivered a good outcome.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It’d be good if they added a phase to give more insights into what’s happening in the market before starting the design. They could go deeper, but generally, we were really satisfied with what they did.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be clear about your expectations and spend as much time as you can explaining your vision before you start.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the COO of Verida, a Web3 data startup.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Excited?

We hired Excited to ensure that we had a clear visual design and brand design throughout our website and social media channels.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The team’s goal is to help us keep our brand fresh and up to date in the market. We’ve been working across a few different streams and that has evolved a little bit over time. They’ve specifically designed and built our websites, and they’re responsible for any updates and changes that we need.

In addition, the team is in charge of designing and working with us to establish our brand guidelines, which include our logo, typography, colors, and materials related to our merchandise. Furthermore, they provide UX design services for our mobile app. Their work involves designing and wireframing the screens that we use in our mobile app.

What is the team composition?

We’re working with Oleksandr (Co-Founder & Design Director) and there are probably 2–3 people we directly collaborate with, depending on the tasks that we have.

How did you come to work with Excited?

They were very responsive, and they were quick to meet our needs as a client. Above all, they were well-positioned from a price point of view and the quality of their work was great.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent over $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing partnership with Excited started in February 2021.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

They have talented designers and we find it easy to work with them. We’ve received feedback on what they’ve delivered from a visual and UX point of view from our customers and internal team. In connection with that, if there’s something we need to adjust, we get back to Excited so that they can provide implement those.

How did Excited perform from a project management standpoint?

They have a great project management process, and even though they have a conflict in Ukraine, they’ve been very flexible and they’ve continued to work for us. We use Slack for collaboration and Figma for the actual design files.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They produce quality work for a boutique design agency. We consider them a trusted partner because they’re very reliable.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. They’ve been able to provide us with a stable working relationship.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be clear with your requirements and be open to Excited’s creative ideas for the first iteration.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a senior product manager of ClubReady. We develop fitness technology, mainly software and mobile apps for everything from small yoga studios to large organizations.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Excited?

We outsourced our UX/UI design to them.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They conducted client interviews to determine what the UX/UI should be. They’re also going to do the full development, now that the design has been completed.

What is the team composition?

Christina (Design Lead) did the majority of the design work, and Oleksandr (Co-Founder) was the product manager.

How did you come to work with Excited?

The head of our product development team found them based on working with them in the past. One of our employees had worked for them in the past as well.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $10,000–$20,000 together.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with them since January 2022. The UX has been delivered, but we still make small changes with them.  

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

The clients that we’ve shown the design to have been very impressed. Overall, Excited is a great studio to work with. Christina is very talented, and I would definitely use her again, and Oleksandr is highly professional. Their work, simple process, and nice manner were all extremely impressive.  

How did Excited perform from a project management standpoint?

They perform very well with project management. Oleksandr and his team are on top of their game 100%.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The personal connections they make stand out the most.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Honestly, no. The Russian Invasion of Ukraine really impacted Excited, so they had to cancel a couple of meetings. If that didn’t happen, then they would have been there every single day.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you’re working with a graphic designer, then Christine is top tier. I’ve worked with hundreds of designers through my career, and she may be the best. They conducted client interviews and did a demo for our clients. They take initiative. Anyone who goes with this company is going to have a good experience.