Colorflow Creative

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a software service startup that makes products to help unions manage their members. I’m a senior software engineer and also do a lot of product management work.

What challenge were you trying to address with Colorflow Creative?

One of the challenges that we were facing was the lack of time to manage the UX and UI part of the product. The UX part, in particular, needed a lot of thought, and I didn’t have the time to dedicate to it. I was too spread out between my other responsibilities.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Colorflow helped us flesh out a good UX for our product’s web and mobile experiences. This was mostly for an enterprise app with some consumer aspects. Because we deal with so much data, we needed to find a way to navigate it.

We wanted a basic design system where we could use different components to build different experiences in the same way but across different experiences, consistently.

What is the team composition?

Dimitri (UX Strategy Lead) handled the UX, and we worked with another designer who used Sketch for the UI.

How did you come to work with Colorflow Creative?

I knew Kateryna (Founder & CEO), who was the UX Designer at a company that I used to work in. She’s my connection, and that’s how I started working with Colorflow.

How much have you invested with them?

The project cost was around the limit of $30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together around June 2020 and wrapped up the project in early November of the same year. That was the first set of work we had with them, and we might continue to do some work with them later on.

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

Looking at the UX side, I would say that it was extremely satisfying; I was very happy with Colorflow’s UX work. For their UI work, I would say that it was pretty good but not as extraordinary as the UX experience we had.

How did Colorflow Creative perform from a project management standpoint?

Colorflow did a really good job of being responsive and following up with the work. As I’ve said earlier, I was being spread out too thin, so I didn’t have the ability to always have a full sketched-out plan or follow up with everyone. 

They did well in managing their own work without too much micromanagement. If I gave them a task, even if it’s open-ended, they’d go figure out the details, follow up with it, and get it to a good spot.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Dimitri did an amazing job. He received minimal explanations around the situation, but he still went through and found the proper solutions. That saved us a lot of time, and to me, that was the most valuable part.

Are there any areas they could improve?

One part that they might be able to do better is their experience with understanding UX design and making suggestions on it. For the UI part, their understanding of how Sketch works and other tools could be better. I’m aware that the UX/UI landscape is progressively changing right now, but it’s nice to be on top of that.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the Co-Founder of a healthcare company.

For what projects/services did your company hire Colorflow Creative, and what were your goals?

After an initial scope call with Kateryna’s team, we felt like their ideas really aligned with how we were trying to position ourselves at this stage; they also quickly grasped and even helped us expand on how we’re looking to address the unique problems of our market when it comes to our user experience (which they knocked out of the park, by the way!)

How did you select Colorflow Creative and what were the deciding factors?

I found Colorflow through an acquaintance who worked with them in designing his own pitch deck and initial MVP concept UX/UI. He had a great experience working with Kateryna and her team and since we were in pretty much the same place he had been, needing a pitch deck and MVP concept to show investors, they seemed like a great fit.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

Colorflow Creative designed our pitch deck as well as the initial UX flows and UI for the MVP - currently being presented to investors. We’ve gotten compliments on our pitch deck from nearly everyone we’ve met with.

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

We were working with Kateryna — (founder and Creative Director), her UX lead, her product innovation specialist and a UI designer.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

“This is the best looking deck we’ve seen in a while” is feedback we’ve consistently heard from investors who’ve seen it to date. Being able to include a few beautifully-designed deck pages within our cold e-mails has been invaluable in actually getting responses.

Kateryna’s team was also unique compared to others we’ve interviewed initially because their UX designer worked closely with a product innovation specialist.

Throughout our work with their team, that combination of insight and expertise helped us approach solving our target user’s unique problems from angles we hadn’t even considered as a possibility / potential edge we could have over competitors.

The UX they conceptualized for us was extremely well thought-through and intentional and the UI was POLISHED and very marketable (they’ll actually create mockups to use in marketing for you if you ask for them). Thanks to Colorflow’s guidance and attention to detail, we’re even more confident in our USP (and soon-to-be product) than we were before.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

Between the clearly spec-ed out project milestones and timeline they initially presented and then their transparent and collaboration-friendly workflow in Asana - I’d give them a 6 out of 5 in this department if I could! We hit each milestone on or before schedule and never felt like we didn’t know what’s going on or what’s being worked on etc.

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

To reiterate here again, Kateryna’s team is unique because their UX designer works closely with a product innovation specialist which has taken our idea even several steps further than we initially conceptualized and through collaborative brainstorming sessions revealed angles we weren’t considering / capitalizing on.

These explorations definitely shaped (and in some ways re-shaped) our UX and produced an even stronger end result and USP. That and they WOW’ed us with the final design of both our deck and MVP concept. They took our aesthetic vision and expanded on it in a way that exceeded our expectations.

We’re very proud to be presenting what they’ve created for us to potential investors and are even more confident in our product and it’s potential for success.

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

Not that we can think of. We’re excited to actually BUILD our app with them once we’re funded!

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and creative director of CINEMA 16. It’s a high-end event and cinematography company that documents private events for high net worth individuals. We work for celebrities and filmmakers who want something much more artful or long-lasting than your typical wedding videography.

We mostly shoot weddings all over the world. We’ve been credited in The New York Times for creating a new category of high-end documentation of private events, called event cinematography instead of event videography.

What challenge were you trying to address with Colorflow Creative?

My career in cinematography began with a different company, which I’d also started. After some personal and professional developments, I sought to relaunch the same services under a new brand name. I relied on Colorflow to creatively interpret my brand identity across all media: primarily, print collateral and a new website.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Colorflow Creative designed and deployed the CINEMA 16 website that you see online today. They developed both the web and mobile components of the platform.

What is the team composition?

I was working with the creative director, Kateryna (Founder & CEO) along with her developer.

How did you come to work with Colorflow Creative?

I was referred to Kateryna by a friend. They worked together when they were at Hilton, and she said she was a fantastic designer who was just starting her own design studio.

How much have you invested with them?

I spent around $25,000 for the whole package.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began the project in June 2019 and wrapped up in mid-August of that year.

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

I couldn’t be happier with the website. My ideas were already pretty creative, and Kateryna was still able to significantly elevate them. She effectively translated my articulated needs into a visual reality. The website build was executed fairly quickly.

How did Colorflow Creative perform from a project management standpoint?

Kateryna is uniquely gifted in that she’s both highly creative and highly organized. She submitted a proposed workflow and timeline and hit those benchmarks without a problem. There wasn’t anything that took me by surprise.

We communicated via email. She offered Slack, but email sufficed for our scope of work.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’d reiterate that Kateryna is exceptionally organized on top of being amazingly creative. I was impressed because I typically find those characteristics to be mutually exclusive, particularly among creatives.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I don’t really have anything bad to say.