Clay

Please describe your company and your position there.

Upli is a mobile app that Upli makes it possible for users to achieve their dreams through smart money management, education and setting goals.

For what projects/services did your company hire Clay?

We hired Clay to redesign our Logo and brand colors. We also had them redesign our entire app UI/UX.

How did you select this vendor?

We took suggestions from our Public Relations firm, and some of our developers also had suggestions. We talked to abut 6 firms and choose Clay in the end.

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

We started the project with a robust review of our category and competitors. Next we talked to current users about their experience with the app. We also held a workshop where we brainstormed some new ideas based on user feedback. When we were done with the designs, we once again put them in front of users to get final feedback before deploying out to Apple and Google.

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

We had a Project Manager, Partner Design Lead and a team of about 4 other designs who worked on the project.

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

We could not be happier with the final product and the design solution they delivered for us. the feedback we have received from investors and partners has been 100% positive and has opened up so many new doors for us. The designs Clay created simplified a very complicated set of features and delivers a wonderful experience for our users.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

They worked as an extension of our own team. They truly cared about the product and its design as much as we did. If was super collaborative.

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

The design talent here is second to nobody.

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

No.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the vice president of products for i360, a data analytics firm that also provides a wide array of software to search and act on the data we provide.

What challenge were you trying to address with Clay?

We wanted to completely overhaul our portal, which is our central product. It’s a query and action tool that our customers use.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They helped us overhaul the usability and UI/UX for our web-based application. They used .NET Core, Angular, and various database technologies. We initially had a beta product, and we asked them to work on a specific area of the product which was limited in scope. We needed them to listen to our use cases that we had around that area and then help us within that limited realm, seen through the interactions that our customers have within that area, and identify which workflows could be re-envisioned and optimized. Then they translated not only workflow diagrams but some basic wireframes.

What is the team composition?

Our primary point of contact was a UX lead.

How did you come to work with Clay?

Our senior in-house UI designer was tasked with evaluating a number of firms. I gave him a specific criterion and he came up with a list of 15-20 firms for me to review. I narrowed that list to about six that I wanted to send a one-page RFP to, which laid out our beta product. We were willing to spend a little bit of money with various firms to see who would work. Clay was the first one we tried and we were very happy with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in September 2018 until January 2019.

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

They were a good fit and they were able to understand our use cases and where our customers would be coming from. As a result, we scaled up to set the basis of our UX guide for a complete redesign and created workflows and wireframes for several of the major components. They’ve given us a backlog of hundreds of wireframes and a guide, and that’s going to be months of work for us to implement. We haven’t even begun to put the mockups they provided in front of beta testers or full customers. However, the reactions have been very positive from everyone that we’ve reviewed them with.

How did Clay perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management was good. I think Clay is one of the better firms I’ve worked with because that understand that there’s a creative process that we need to be able to understand. They appreciate that the process has to be directed and lead to deliverables that we can act on. It was a really good balance. We had a weekly conference call and a shared Slack channel. We communicated either daily or every other day.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We serve a unique nonprofit, so one of the challenges is understanding the use cases our customers have. There are applicable parallels in some commercial products out there. It’s not common for people to pick up on those parallels quickly, but Clay did. They simplified it from a UI perspective and they picked up on the use cases and the parallels to some of the commercial work they’ve done. It didn’t take them long to get there.

They also processed the volume of information we threw at them and turned it into quality deliverables quickly. There was clearly a creative process occurring. They’re a very bright team.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Communication was sometimes a challenge. Around the holidays, we lost a little bit of productivity time. They went off in a direction that wasn’t as useful when we could have used that time in another direction. That was just a breakdown in communication that may not have occurred if it wasn’t the holiday period. We needed to maintain focus and have better communication during that time.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Communicate. Take the time to write out exactly what it is you’re looking for. It allows them to create some really good and precise workflows.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder and creator of a product called Prism, which is a mobile bill pay experience for American consumers. It was acquired by a company called Handle Financial, where I am now the head of product for Prism.

What challenge were you trying to address with Clay?

We were looking to revamp our payment experience.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our payment experience is the core of what we do, so doing it really well is very important. We hadn’t really touched or iterated it for a while, and had since learned a lot, received customer feedback, and collected data from support cases.

They took the high-level problem statement we had, as well as some of the nuances of what we do, synthesized that information and worked on early iterations and mock-ups. They’re particularly good at iterating, listening, and taking our feedback along the way which is super helpful.

They excel at building a phone-based interface and are very up to date on the current trends and modern apps features. They helped us layer that angle into what we do. They helped us solve our problems, but also helped us to convey our functionality in a way that aligns with industry standards and user expectations.

What is the team composition?

We primarily interacted with the project manager and their director of design. I’m unsure of exactly how many designers contributed, but there were several.

How did you come to work with Clay?

We had worked with them when Prism was still independent after I’d been referred to them by a fellow iOS developer. We really liked their work so they helped us with several iterations of our app experience as well as our consumer-facing website. As we had worked with them before, there was a level of trust on our end that they could handle whatever we threw at them during this project.

How much have you invested in them?

We spent between $25,000–$50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them on this project from February to April 2018.

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

Our engineering team is starting to work on actually implementing the design, but in the user testing that we have done, everyone has been thrilled with it. Their cost is high, but we’ve continued to find that the value they provide is worth it. I’m keen on using them again in the future as new and different needs arise.

How did Clay perform from a project management standpoint?

We interacted with them once or twice a week, depending on where we were within the project, as well as via a private Slack channel. Having the time to chat live was really helpful in walking through their latest iterations and giving immediate feedback.

We didn’t have strict deadlines. There were a few situations where we weren’t quite satisfied with what they had done, but they were more than happy to go back to the drawing board and iterate. Similarly, there was another point where they wanted to spend a little more time on a specific area to iterate and work on it. As we weren't schedule driven, we were flexible and taking an extra two or three days was not critical. We were more focused on the overall quality of it.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Overall, I am extremely satisfied. They helped us arrive at a solution and an interface that we are extremely proud of and are very much looking forward to getting into our customer’s hands.

We continue to be impressed by their ability to dive into a problem area or space that they may or may not be familiar with and pull out the essence of what our challenges are, or what we are struggling with, then really help us map out what needs to be done.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They’re very receptive to feedback. If they deliver something that you are not happy with or you feel it isn’t solving one or more of your requirements, be willing to communicate that with them. They hold themselves to a very high standard.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We build software to facilitate the execution of different phases of clinical trials. We focus on randomization and trial supply technologies, which deal with patient data capture and shipping logistics. I'm a principal architect responsible for building the product roadmap as well as product and process management.

What challenge were you trying to address with Clay?

We wanted to upgrade our user experience and aspects of our technology stack. We were implementing some new products into our overall ecosystem. We wanted a partner to help us survey our users and help us make sure everything works well from a user experience perspective.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Clay started off by surveying our product documentation and demos. We walked them through the actual application portfolio and our products. Together we created a project plan for the whole user experience initiative. They identified a list of internal and external stakeholders to interview for feedback on our existing products. They conducted around 15 internal and 15 external interviews and then we took all of that information and put together a design plan. Based on our information architecture, they went through a process to plan out a series of product releases. They also put together a project plan and then we started spec to look at the functionality. Currently they’re taking the solution through the actual design process and implementation.

What is the team composition?

We mostly work with a project manager, art director, and creative director but we also interact with their frontend developers.

How did you come to work with Clay?

We started looking at about 10 design companies. It was initially a global search that we wound up focusing us on San Francisco because our office is based there. Clay has a location in San Francisco so we brought them in for an interview. They showed us a lot of good product designs and gave us some good examples. When we put out our request for information (RFI), they came in with a bid that fit our price range and also seemed reasonable. A lot of other vendors were either outlandishly expensive or completely under-scoped the project. Clay came in with a pretty good target rate for the size of the initiative. We liked their people and what they brought to the table.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project kickoff was in April 2017 and the engagement is ongoing.

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

We haven't gone live yet but we did present the designs and mock-ups at user group meetings. The users were definitely impressed with the direction and the new look and feel.

How did Clay perform from a project management standpoint?

We integrated their developers into our agile process in Jira so we're working with them every day. The project managers also work with our systems to track all of the project elements. They're very responsive and proactive. I really like that they’ll push back when they really feel something will improve the user experience. They have great experience and are very intelligent.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their creative direction is really good. Their design team is able to start from a limited set of requirements and provide very robust designs. Our product and subject matter is quite complicated. Clay takes complex concepts and translates them into a good user interface and user experience.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could be a little bit better with project planning and scoping. To be fair, we made it difficult for them to accurately scope because we made so many changes. Redoing enterprise software is a large project and we completely changed the game plan several times, so I give them credit for being pretty flexible.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure you have a strong process. Define your stakeholder list, project plan and roadmap. Before you start programming, make sure you have enough functionality for them to work on. We had a lot of stuff ready for them to program at the beginning, but then they caught up and had to wait on us.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder and CEO of a mobile app prototyping platform. We help users formalize their ideas so they can go to market quickly.

What challenge were you trying to address with Clay?

We wanted to create a new product without sacrificing any internal resources, so we decided to outsource design work to a third-party agency.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We described the concept and handed wireframes to Clay. We gave them some data, and they also conducted their own research with our customers. From here, they designed the information architecture and visual interface of our product.

The initial deliverable was a full mockup of the tool’s user flow. After that, they worked on a high-fidelity visual design.

What is the team composition?

We worked with three or four people from their team, including the CEO, the creative director, and two visual designers.

How did you come to work with Clay?

We found them through online research, though it’s possible they were recommended to us. We interviewed three or four agencies before narrowing the list to two and conducting trial engagements.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $20,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together between January–April 2017. After hiring additional staff, we decided to complete the design and development in-house.

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

Clay was very helpful. We worked collaboratively on UI and they set the initial groundwork, proposing a number of ideas for the application. While we ended up going with a different solution, our final product was heavily informed by Clay’s thinking and findings.

How did Clay perform from a project management standpoint?

Communication was very efficient while I was working near Clay’s San Francisco office. After returning to Europe, however, the time zone difference added complications. Still, they were willing to work with us and communicated outside their normal office hours.

Despite Clay’s efforts, working with remote teams can be difficult. The project wasn’t moving as quickly as we hoped, so we shifted the project to our in-house team to improve efficiency.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re very proactive designers who conducted thorough research and contributed a number of innovative ideas. Their team is tech-savvy and familiar with market trends, so they offered valuable insights. We communicated clearly and they had an intuitive understanding of our goals. They felt like members of our team.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Their creative director became less involved as we moved into the design phase, which caused some communication issues. If their ideas had been presented directly by the creative lead, it may have led to a better solution.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Clients shouldn’t interfere with the design process too much. Clay knows what they’re doing and should be given room for creative freedom.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Mercari is a Japanese mobile application that hired me as their first product lead to help with their expansion into the U.S. market.

What challenge were you trying to address with Clay?

We were looking to redesign the app and customize it for the U.S. market. We didn’t have in-house design talent and needed a design agency to help us.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We started out with a discovery phase where they talked to the product team and executives to understand the project’s key roles, visions, and what we were looking for the product to drive. They came back with a couple different design directions for us to choose between and then created designs and screens for our mobile app.

We sat down with some of their people on site to do mock ups and go over designs of specific screens and flows. It was an iterative process where they went back and forth in order to come up with what we wanted to build.

What is the team composition?

I worked directly with Anton (CEO, Clay) and a lead designer who both met with us in person. We communicated with the other designers via email.

How did you come to work with Clay?

I searched online for agencies in the San Francisco area that had good reviews and also looked at portfolios. We talked to a couple design agencies to get information and do an initial vetting. We decided to go with Clay because of the price and process they introduced, as well as for how aligned they were with what we needed.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $20,000–$25,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2016 for a month-long engagement.

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

We definitely liked the direction they went in. They gave us available options, which was nice for us because we were able to look at different ways to think about the flows and design. We eventually hired an in-house lead designer who used Clay’s design templates as a baseline to start work on the app. We definitely used the work they provided.

How did Clay perform from a project management standpoint?

They did pretty well. Anton was very participative in the project and came to the office if they had to discuss something. They would come in and present designs to us rather than over the phone, which was good. We did a lot of the work over email.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have a very solid design team. They came up with some interesting design angles and had some very creative flows. They work with a lot of different clients. They take the best of best practices from different places in order to see how they can apply them to a new domain.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I didn’t have any issues with them. It’s great to have a design firm that’s engaged, but for companies our size, you want to have someone in-house all the time because of the workload. I enjoyed my work with Clay.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They’re exceptional in terms of planning the engagement. They’re pretty proactive as well.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I was VP of Product, responsible for the development of multiple consumer-facing product initiatives, including mobile apps.

For what projects/services did your company hire Clay?

We needed to integrate a core registration process with many different apps.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to redesign the registration process as a primarily mobile experience. We also wanted to simplify it as much as possible, even though it required some technical steps. Ultimately, we wanted to improve conversion rates.

How did you select this vendor?

We initially issued an RFP to a few companies, but were not satisfied with the results or timelines. We later reached out to Clay based on a recommendation from another vendor.

Describe the project in detail.

Clay consulted with us on the most efficient way to present the registration and setup processes to customers. Then they created workflow mockups that showed how these processes would look on both iOS and Android, and built a design library that could be incorporated into our SDKs and given out to external development partners.

What was the team composition?

Our team consisted of a project manager and two designers.

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

Clay brought several suggestions to the table that we wouldn’t have arrived at on our own, such as using animations to help improve conversion. They clearly and easily explained a set of directions regarding the implementation. They also understood the differences between iOS and Android, which were unusually complicated for this project because of the technical nature of our registration process.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The communication was as expected or above average. Clay provided web-based summaries of communication and made it easy to share documents between the teams.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I was impressed with Clay's ability to think creatively about a highly technical problem. It is not always easy for a design shop that focuses on creativity to understand technical complexities. But Clay distilled complex concepts into simple steps that our end customers could understand.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the vice president of a venture fund. We are a regular venture fund for investing in small stakes and startups, but we’re also an incubator that develops companies from scratch.

What challenge were you trying to address with Clay?

We were developing our idea for a communication platform. We wanted a distinct and unique design for the app, and needed a provider who could design our product’s appearance and user experience.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have in-house development resources, but Clay designed the app’s overall look and user experience. They helped us with both the iOS application and the desktop version.

Another company had created an initial version of the app, but we weren’t happy with it and wanted to pivot away from it. There are a lot of other communication platforms out there. We showed Clay what the app should look like, explained the problems that existing apps have, and had asked them to address all of that. They gave us a lot of new ideas about how we could differentiate ourselves.

Someone else handled the creation of the Android version, but our designers used the iOS version that Clay developed to create the Android app.

What is the team composition?

We worked with Anton Zykin [CEO, Clay] and two other people who took care of the design.

How did you come to work with Clay?

We found them through Behance. We also looked at another two providers, but their designs looked too much like other market players’ work. Clay had won a contest. We chose them because they had shown us something completely different, which was what we wanted.

How much have you invested in them?

We have spent around $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in September of 2016, and the project was completed in January of 2017.

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

We launched it in the App Store a few months ago, but we haven’t started a marketing push yet. It is a business messenger with a very distinct color palette and interface. Everyone within our company has been using it for all internal communication.

Although it is accessible to the outside, it is still in its beta stage. We still want to work on a few other features before launching it to a wider market.

How did Clay perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management was great. They always kept in touch with us and tried to understand what we wanted. They were creating a new product, which isn’t an easy thing to do. We have an unusual approach to task management and communication, so they had to spend a lot of time with us to understand our revisions and give us their perspective. It was a long process, but it was structured well.

They made an InVision prototype, which helped us see how the app would work before we began programming it. After that, we changed a lot of the features in the InVision prototype. They were a few weeks late on a couple of milestones, but that was normal. We’ve worked with a lot of designers who were late by several months, so two weeks is nothing.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their understanding of interfaces was great, and their work with color palettes and user preferences was impressive. The app had a lot of complicated features, but they somehow made it work in an accessible way.

It took a lot of time, but they were professional. Both the UI and UX are very high-quality in comparison with other apps. When you work with designers and UX people, they usually look at other apps in the industry and create a hodgepodge of features. Instead, Clay tried to invent something new. A lot of our ideas came from them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I don’t think so. They gave us a lot of ideas; some were not completely relevant, but they always tried to be helpful.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They are very open and smart. Give them as much information as you can, and they will process it in the right way. Don’t expect them to understand your business. Be open about what you want to do and be as detailed as you can about your product and what you want to build.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the Former Co-Founder of Chronotrack, a tech company operating in the athletic endurance events space. We build race timing hardware for marathons and triathlons, as well as software to manage and score those events.

During my time with the company, we timed, scored and collected data from majority of marathons, triathlons, and cycling events in the United States, as well as a large share of global events.

What challenge were you trying to address with Clay?

While we had engineering expertise in-house, we initially hired Clay to provide UX design for an application that allows users to register for endurance events.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Clay provided the UI/UX design for the application based on our requirements, but we ended up relying on their development expertise, as well. This allowed us to streamline the project and avoid any communication issues between their design team and our in-house developers.

We described the features we wanted and they created a browser-based HTML5 platform that we integrated with our backend systems. The platform works in conjunction with a native application built by our in-house team.

What is the team composition?

I worked directly with their CEO.

How did you come to work with Clay?

They came highly recommended by a friend who hired Clay to create an online map application. I reached out to them and flew to meet the CEO at their New York office. I was very impressed by him and his team, and while I didn’t have a project in mind at the time, I knew I wanted to work with them in some capacity.

We wanted to test the full range of their design capabilities by giving them a brand new project. When we solidified plans to create the registration application, I contacted Clay right away.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together between January 2015–April 2015.

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

We’d worked with a number of UI designers, but the application Clay provided was the best. Anyone can create an attractive design, but their team took user experience into consideration and provided recommendations for improving navigation.

The platform averaged 500,000 views per month, which was fairly successful given that we were a specialized business. We timed roughly 18 million runners in the United States alone, so a sizeable portion of our audience utilized the application.

How did Clay perform from a project management standpoint?

One of our biggest priorities was to work with a vendor that could operate without day-to-day oversight. Clay’s independence allowed them to get the job done without a lot of handholding. They worked in two-week sprints and I only spoke with them twice during each sprint to give feedback and make any necessary adjustments. Their self-reliance was one of the key reasons we decided to let them to build the product in addition to design.

They were easy to work with, responsive to feedback, and met every deadline.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We were a small company, and even though Clay has worked with some of the biggest tech companies in the country, their CEO still took time to get to know our brand. They were engaged, down-to-earth, and had strong communication skills.

I also appreciated their focus on both UI and UX. Lots of vendors say they focus on user experience, but ultimately rely on the client to provide rote design instructions. Clay helped us fine-tune a UX strategy and pushed back against any flawed ideas. That’s what we wanted, a partner to think deeply about the problem and provide an effective solution.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It was sometimes difficult to communicate with their overseas developers, but their CEO always stepped in to provide translations whenever necessary. Their developers were highly skilled, so I was happy to work through these very minor communication issues.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It can be difficult to describe design ideas over the phone, so I recommend starting any project with a face-to-face meeting to go over the initial details. I met with Clay in-person at the beginning and the rest of the project was done remotely, which worked very well for us. This is a strategy I use in my current position when working with remote employees.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CEO of Checkmate. We have an app for enabling customers to split their check while dining in restaurants with their friends.

For what projects/services did your company hire Clay?

We needed to design our application.

What were your goals for this project?

We were developing an app from scratch and wanted it to have a polished look as well as an extremely intuitive interface. We wanted to have the functionality of splitting a check in the first iteration of the app, which was a quite complicated thing to do.

How did you select this vendor?

We looked at and interviewed various design firms for this project. We wanted someone with not only the right experience but also the right team to be able to brainstorm with us on this brand new app. They had an appealing process and their team seemed great.

Describe the project in detail.

The idea was to build an iOS app that enabled customers to split their check from within their phone when dining in restaurants. The app would be integrated with POS systems and had to be able to normalize the data coming in from various places. It also had to be very intuitive so that the customers would welcome the chance of not waiting for the waiters to pay for their food.

What was the team composition?

My engineer and I were involved, as well as three team members from Clay.

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

The app was launched but it didn’t get much traction due to lack of marketing. However, the feedback from the people that used it was great.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Their communication and synergy were great.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

We really appreciated their team’s hands-on approach as well as their ability to contribute not just with design but with the overall idea of the project.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No. Their quality of work, output, speed, and cost were all great.