Pragmatics Studio

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am an executive of Monthly Dignity

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We are a menstrual equity non-profit organization that distributes menstrual products to community-based organizations, offers free menstrual health education, and advocates for policies to address period poverty.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Pragmatics Studio to accomplish?

Redesign our website

SOLUTION

How did you find Pragmatics Studio?

Online Search

Why did you select Pragmatics Studio over others?

• High ratings
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Pragmatics Studio were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

We hired Pragmatics Studio to redesign our website. This was a major redesign as we had grown significantly as an organization since our last refresh, and so the deliverables included designing a new page layout that aligned with our new branding, rethinking the page structure to reflect our expanded outreach strategy, and integrating new features into the website (e.g. translation, downloadable resources, a donation portal).

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Our redesigned website is a beautiful reflection of our organisation's mission and values. It effectively showcases all of our areas of work, which has dramatically increased our public visibility and engagement - measured by a significant increase in partnership requests from community organisations, media requests, and corporate donations.

The tools built into the website also streamline our work and noticeably decrease the time spent updating content and managing contact form submissions.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

The Pragmatics Studio team were so lovely to work with. They adapted to our time and organizational constraints (e.g. delayed timelines, limited internal capacity, rapidly evolving needs) flawlessly and were able to guide us through the steps needed to meet our goals for this project.

After an initial meeting to define the scope of the project, they created a detailed plan mapping out each step of the project and what we would need to provide at each stage. As we moved forward, they were great at keeping things on track, translating our vague requests into actionable outcomes, and adapting to our limited knowledge of web development & maintenance.

What was your primary form of communication with Pragmatics Studio?

• In-Person Meeting
• Virtual Meeting

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

I was so impressed by their ability to turn our half-baked ideas for our website into a clear vision of the aesthetic, functionality, and goals of each page. Working with Pragmatics Studio has fundamentally changed how we think about our online presence.

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

Nothing! We had a great experience.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO of a digital health technology startup

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Pragmatics Studio?

We hired Pragmatics to build the UI/UX of our digital health coach mobile app for patients

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We met one of the co-founders of Pragmatics through a mutual friend. We had a number of meetings/interviews with the 2 co-founders of Pragmatics subsequently, and decided to hire them. We were particularly impressed with their attitude, clearness of thought, innovative and problem-solving mindset, and general "ease-to-work-with".

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

Pragmatics concluded a thorough research about user behaviour and the most recent findings on digital behavioural coaching. We then had a workshop with our development team to align on key elements of our target user and the rough framework of the app. They then produced the early mockups for feedback. We stayed connected and kept in the loop throughout the process, with ClickUp and Figma. The Pragmatics team sent us weekly video updates with clear identification of the areas they needed our input.

Later in the project, we began to have in-person problem solving sessions to efficiently align on the finer details of the design and user experience. They also kept the programmers in the loop throughout this process.

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

My team worked directly with the 2 co-founders of Pragmatics

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have begun user testing of the app Pragmatics designed for us and the feedback from our potential future users have been extraordinary.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

They have been very clear and direct in communication. They have also met every deadline set with minimal fuss.

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

Their attitude is the most impressive and unique thing about this company. They are clearly passionate about the work they do, and put their all into helping the client figure out a way around every obstacle, rather than complaining. Attitude, passion, commitment.

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

No

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO of an education technology company that sells student success software to universities and colleges, headquartered in Toronto, Canada.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Pragmatics Studio?

We noticed that tutoring centres in the United States required a functionality that our platform did not have. The functionality was the ability for school administrators to set schedules on behalf of tutors. Prior to working with Pragmatics, our solutions allowed tutors to input their availabilities only as this was how most tutoring programs function in Canada.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We've worked with one of the lead UI/UX developers, Allan, extensively in the past. He mentioned that he had started Pragmatics and would like to move our project to it. We've had great experiences working with Allan in the past, so moving to Pragmatics was only natural.

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

We had a kick-off call where we explained the reason why we needed this function. From there, Pragmatics asked us to provide them with a user story on the feature. Once provided, we had weekly meetings with Allan to go over and provide feedback the various iterations of the design.

After each meeting, Allan would do research to see how other companies tackled the UI/UX challenges that we had. By week four, the designs were near completion and by week five the project was delivered and completed.

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

Two people.

• Charlie, Co-Founder and Design Partner.
• Allan, Freelance Product Designer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We're happy with the project. The feature that was developed will allow us to confidently approach all types of centres in the US market knowing that we can provide value to them.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Allan was easy to communicate with, patient, and open to feedback. He was respectful of timelines and managed the project very well.

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

I am always happy to see the level of diligence and research that Allan does when working with us. He will do a lot of market research to see how various companies are solving the problem that we are trying to solve. Allan is also cognizant of how certain design considerations can increase or decrease development time based off how our team works and has built our current product. Allan also has a deep understanding of how our product functions, the value propositions, and the types of users. This added context makes the experience much greater.

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

None

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CEO of Waverly, we're building an AI-driven platform that allows people to discover, read and share content aligned to their interests.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Pragmatics Studio?

We needed to design a great user experience for our mobile app, which is based on a novel natural language understanding algorithm and therefore required original approach to UX.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We had worked with Charlie in the past and had been very satisfied, so it was natural to continue with Pragmatics. To better understand how we selected Charlie in the early days of Waverly: we did multiple interviews with UX designers.

Charlie had been warmly recommended, had experience working with startups, was not afraid of fuzzily-defined tasks and evolving objectives, and was very aligned with our vision. He was our top candidate.

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

Pragmatics was in charge of all aspects of UX and UI design. They led ideation sessions, where they would understand the challenge of users and propose an experiences based on these learning. They created detailed designs of the mobile app in Figma, with enough details so that programmers could implement them.

These designs included animations of components and interactive demos that were useful in communicating and implementing the experience. It also included original visuals (icons, etc.) that were useful in branding the mobile app.

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

One: Charlie.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We released two versions of the mobile app. One of our goal was to increase engagement with "waves", which are the topic-specific feeds provided in Waverly. Following the implementation of the changes proposed by Pragmatics usage of the feature went up by 200%. We also got very positive organic user feedback on the new main page design as well as on the new sharing features designed by pragmatics.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Communication was a mix of asynchronous discussions on Slack and 1h weekly sync. There was also a number of impromptu collaboration working sessions (in Figma) between Charlie at pragmatic and someone from the dev team at Waverly. Progress was tracked through a simple document, but it was very effective at conveying the scope and at measuring advancement.

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

Amongst the studio I know, Pragmatics Studio had a unique ability to work with challenging UX scenarios that were breaking new grounds. Not only do they have a deep understanding of UX, they know all the emerging patterns and are able to recombine then (and even innovate) to solve challenges that are unique to a new type of app. They do that while taking UX design principles very serious. Also, they're super fast.

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

We would have liked to continue our working relationship with them, unfortunately their priorities took them elsewhere. So as an improvement, I would say: scale your team so you can continue serving customers that love you! :)

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Lead, Facilitation & IT of an incubator.

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We're the entrepreneurship and innovation incubator at a University, providing support to Canadian entrepreneurs, as well as CU students, staff and faculty

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Pragmatics Studio to accomplish?

• Overhaul our Residency Program to allow for it to be more impactful, and more effectively respond to true needs of future participants
• Better define and make more intentional our approaches to experiential learning
• Push our boundaries and our comfort zone of what the Residency program should be, move us from stagnation to innovation.
• Challenge our assumptions about what is working well in the program, and offer actionable connections between changes in method and changes in outcomes.

SOLUTION

How did you find Pragmatics Studio?

Referral

Why did you select Pragmatics Studio over others?

• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Pragmatics Studio were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Pragmatics Studio was brought in to structure and support our redevelopment of the Residency program, pointing out our blind spots, and applying their expertise in learning experience design to bring focus to our desired outcomes, and ensure our next cohort accomplishes those outcomes more effectively. Pragmatics developed frameworks to tease out and make concrete our strategic objectives for the program, auditing our practices and content to better align with our intended outcomes.

Pragmatics Studio delivered realtime interventions throughout the cohort that was active during the project, allowing us to experiment with new techniques and see their impact immediately.

Pragmatics Studio produced a figjam digital whiteboard to map our journey, connect insights, relate context from previous discussions. This artifact will be used to map and implement changes to the program.

Pragmatics Studio also produced a playbook with condensed insights and tangible "quick wins" type guidance, with specific directions on how to rework existing material, as well as proposing new material and structures. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Clear roadmap to implementing changes that are evidence-backed to improve participant outcomes.  

Strong alignment between Residency program team members and in relation to relevant stakeholders where there was previously a misalignment. 

Realtime interventions in the active cohort that instantly improved session outcomes from one session to the next.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

The project was managed proactively, with Pragmatics Studio injecting some much-needed external "good pressure" to keep our team motivated and on track.

What was your primary form of communication with Pragmatics Studio?

• In-Person Meeting
• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

The most impressive part of working with Pragmatics Studio was how they approached the project with frankness and humility. Avoiding buzzwords, rabbit holes, they uncovered what really needed to be changed about the program with great care for our emotional attachment to it (and without allowing that attachment to get in the way of challenging our assumptions.) 

Pragmatics Studio's particular background in designing and carrying out learning experiences seems to be unique in the field and was essential to give us confidence in their proposals

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

No, we are very satisfied with the service. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO of Ground News, a news comparison platform

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Pragmatics Studio?

We hired members of Pragmatic studio to provide ongoing design support for marketing projects and web design.

SOLUTION

How did you select Pragmatic Studio and what were the deciding factors?

We selected them based on a great word of mouth recommendation

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

Ther was no signle specific projects but a series of projects completed to provide ongoing design support for marketing projects and web design.

How many resources from the Pragmatic Studio team worked with you, and what were their positions?

1 designer

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The series of projects were all succesful

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

very effective.

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

Their flexibility, timeliness, and great communication were impressive.

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

No, they were excellent.