Excited

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and CEO of a software development company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Excited?

We needed help generating new designs more quickly.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Excited has provided UX/UI design services for our company, starting with a discovery phase where we explored our users' main journeys and goals. From there, they have developed prototypes and high-fidelity designs from scratch for our responsive web app, which has already included user personas.

What is the team composition?

We work with four people from their team: the head of the firm and three designers.

How did you come to work with Excited?

We found them through a Google search and chose them based on their understanding of CRMs and B2B SaaS.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We have been working together since February 2024, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The quality of Excited’s work has met our expectations.

How did Excited perform from a project management standpoint?

Excited has delivered everything on time and within budget. The team communicates well with us, and we use Linear and Figma for project management and Slack for communication.

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

Oleksandr, the head of the firm, has been especially good.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Since we’re building a startup, we always want them to work faster, but they’ve been very good overall.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I recommend working with them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the head of product and strategy for a cashback services company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Excited?

We needed external design help as we hired new designers. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Excited provided an outsourced design team that worked with us full-time as members of our team. The team worked on specific tasks and offered design management, too, working in tandem. Excited teammates support designing our school's new core products, providing product and mobile design. We onboarded Excited's team into our company's process, and they worked directly with our product manager.

What is the team composition?

Excited's product designer worked with us full-time, and their lead designer helped us part-time as a design manager.

How did you come to work with Excited?

We met Excited in Ukraine during an educational program. We had personally connected before, and I saw the team's portfolio. After we did some introduction calls discussing Excited's services, they made me feel comfortable working with them. We went through a small probation period to see if they could provide the types of services we needed, and it worked out, so we engaged in a long-term project.
How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $20,000–$30,000 on our engagement.

What is the status of this engagement?
We started working with Excited around six months ago and are about to conclude our partnership this week since we've hired new designers and no longer require their services.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We shared feedback with Excited as they worked on our product. The team was aware of how their designs performed with users and understood the impact of their work, guided by our metrics. The design work of Excited was within our expectations, and the provided designs met their function. Excited was proactive in learning about our company products and requirements, providing additional ideas.

How did Excited perform from a project management standpoint?

Excited designers meet deadlines and have access to our corporate Slack and Jira. Excited also had access to our corporate Notion, which we used for product requirements, storing documents, and as a knowledge base. The project management was more similar to an outsource model since we worked directly with Excited's designers. Each teammate met individual expectations.

The payment process was smooth, as Excited's financial team worked directly with my company's financial department, and I wasn't required to participate in that process. The team had a great approval process off sheets, and the onboarding went well. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

We usually didn't use external providers for this kind of work and took this engagement cautiously. I was mostly impressed by the quality of Excited's teammates; their willingness to help was quick from our initial talks and project, which lasted several weeks.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Excited asked me the same question, and I couldn't find a good answer. 

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

I suggest being clear and knowing the final output you require for any design projects.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm a lead software engineer at a software company that sells a CRM full-suite product to clubs and gyms across the world. My main role is building our product's frontend.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Excited?

Our software was aged, and our site's UI/UX design needed an update. We were tasked with replacing many of the same functionalities so our clients didn't need to do a major retraining effort. We also wanted to take advantage of new technologies to get a fresh look that was cohesive with our sister companies that we worked closely with. Overall, we needed to migrate to technologies that are easier for us to manage to have a better dashboard and support. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

I've worked with Excited on different aspects of our software, mainly related to the member-facing side and some backend development. Excited has created a design system that utilizes reusable components and styles, which has helped us have a cohesive company feel across our products. The project's initial step has required Excited to conduct client interviews with 10–15 of our biggest customers. 

During these interviews, the team asked questions about how users used our product to find which functions were irrelevant and which could move forward. Excited has organized the results of that intelligence gathering, after which we've asked the team to recreate functionalities of third-party services to offer them as part of our in-house full suite. Excited has rewritten 6–7 different features of our app, many of which aren't new, but the team has helped us put our take to it. 

Our stack was originally written in PHP, and Excited has helped us switch most of our backend technologies over to AWS Lambda and API functions. The frontend also used PHP, which was harder for us to update quickly. We wanted to take advantage of Ionic's toolsets, and Excited has used Angular and React to build and host pages natively. The team shares designs via Figma. 

What is the team composition?
I'm mostly in contact with Khrystyna (Product Designer) and another teammate. I know a bigger team works hands-on in our designs, although I don't work directly with them.

How did you come to work with Excited?

We work with many clients from all over the world and have some clients in Ukraine. Excited had worked for a Ukranian client, and we were able to bring them into our environment.
How much have you invested with them?

We've spent around $50,000 as a total investment.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Excited around a year and a half ago, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our measurement of success for Excited is their ability to help us engage with our customers in moving forward with this modernization effort. We've been successful in retaining our clients, and Excited's design has given us a smooth and effective transition to move our clients into this modern environment. The team has been very helpful across multiple teams in our organization, and this project has been a significant and daunting effort. 

The other measurement of success is in Excited's design of new features that we didn't previously have. We'll expose customers to those new features through a beta release over the next few months. The customers are very excited and have committed to financial agreements based on what we've built on their designs. Excited has helped us go from an idea concept to building and selling new features to clients who are investing in us and supporting us through the complete process. 

How did Excited perform from a project management standpoint?

Excited's project management is transparent and we have multiple streams of communication available for us. We communicate with the team through Slack channels, where we have our daily communication and meetings through Google Meet. Excited offers weekly updates of the project's status, whether it's written or during our meetings. We never guess what the work Excited will show. 

We do our internal sprint planning in Microsoft Azure, although Excited isn't involved in this task. We manage the project with the team on Figma, where we can establish tasks and notes of the work that needs to be accomplished; we find it easy to interact with specific parts of the design.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I'm mostly impressed by Excited's creativity and flexibility to be adaptable. We've brought the team some interesting problems to deal with since we have over 100 brands globally with 10,000–15,000 different individual locations. Our project involves a lot of variability and customization that end clients want to implement at varying price packages. Customers see our site differently since our software is configurable depending on the client's payments and requests. 

Excited's attention to detail and requirement gathering really stands out. I'm a UI/UX designer, and the companies I've worked with that had in-house designers weren't as proficient at requirement gathering and laying out all the potential pipelines that could occur. This ability pays off because we've been able to deliver and sell a thorough and robust product that can be tailored to our customers' needs. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Excited can improve their competitor analysis for some of our requested designs. The team operates in Ukraine, and we operate in the US, which might cause Excited complications. Still, I'd like the team to overlap some features other competitors offer and provide us with different price points specific to our requests. 

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

I suggest being knowledgeable in the environment you ask Excited to design for. The team is very thorough in their requirement gathering and can operate in any environment, but their service will be more effective with more information you can provide. We've worked on several projects with Excited, some of which we didn't really have an idea of where the design could go, and the designs that came out were less useful if we actually decided to build something off of that. 

Excited will operate much more effectively with the more information they receive upfront.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of technology of International Scholarship and Tuition Services (ISTS). We provide scholarship management, tuition assistance, and reimbursement management services to companies with public or private scholarships for their employees.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Excited?

We wanted to redesign our existing website because it looked a bit dated. We needed to give it a facelift.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Excited has designed our web application. They’ve used Figma for the design.

The application allows users to fill out their application and go through the process to apply for a program. We’re currently in the final stages of the project; Excited is now focusing on support as we transition into the actual development process.

What is the team composition?

We work with 3–4 teammates.

How did you come to work with Excited?

I found them on Clutch and read some reviews. We initially researched and found many firms online. We contacted several companies but were most impressed by Excited’s package. They were far better than others, and their pricing was much more reasonable.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $30,000–$50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in October 2023, and our relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The whole thought around the redesign is that it’ll impact our bottom line, but that’s only manageable as we go forward. However, Excited has been very accommodating and exceeded expectations.

How did Excited perform from a project management standpoint?

They hit every point on their timeline. Moreover, they go above and beyond the original scope. We brought up something extra at some point, and they accommodated us without a problem.

We mainly communicate through Slack and use Figma to deliver the work and go back and forth on the platform.

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

Anastasiia (Product Designer) is the lead, and she’s incredible.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their biggest strength is their domain knowledge; they know their work.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, they cover everything.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

You can’t go wrong with them; they’re a dependable company. Just make sure that what you’re asking them to do is in line with what they do, and be thorough.

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.