Futurehaus

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Hiitide partners with authors and publishers to create and manage virtual book clubs for their books. Members can also take courses alongside it.

What challenge were you trying to address with Futurehaus?

We wanted to make our platform more receptive to consumer participation.

What was the scope of their involvement?

I put together a questionnaire for our company’s vision and a brand guide for them to follow.

During the planning phase, Futurehaus did user interviews to test the hypotheses we had going into the whole project. After those interviews, they created some designs that we reviewed, and then they did a second round of user testing.

They took the refined designs and created a prioritized backlog of features and user stories ready to be developed by our technology partners.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with two people.

How did you come to work with Futurehaus?

A former employee referred them to me. I had several conversations with Javier (CEO & Founder). He struck me as incredibly thoughtful, qualified, and trustworthy.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $12,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing engagement with them started in September 2020.

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

My initial impressions of Javier were consistent with my experience of working with them. As a result of their work, I will get another round of financing from the board after what I’ve shown them.

How did Futurehaus perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management style was exceptional. We used Miro and Slack. They also sent recap emails.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Along with their project management, they consistently met timelines while remaining thoughtful with their design execution.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing that I experienced that they need to improve dramatically.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Just show up. Futurehaus does a good job. They make sure you get the most value out of the project if you do your part.

If you stay on the timeline, they’ll stay on theirs.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for Braven, which is a national nonprofit that helps students from humble beginnings land strong jobs after college. We work in partnership with universities and employer-partners to offer college students a three-credit course at our partner universities.

Fellows develop the skills, experiences, networks, and confidence to land strong jobs worthy of their degrees after college.

What challenge were you trying to address with Futurehaus?

We hired Futurehaus to help bring our 2020 Impact Report to life on the web.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Futurehaus helped bring our Impact Report from a PDF to an interactive web page with animations.

What is the team composition?

We have been working with Javier (Founder) and Caity-Shea (Account Manager).

How did you come to work with Futurehaus?

Someone referred them to us.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost was under $10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We were on a very tight deadline, but Futurehaus made it work, which we are so thankful for. We worked together from September–October 2020.

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

We've heard great feedback from our community — they love the new web version. For context, this was the first time we created a web version of our Impact Report.

How did Futurehaus perform from a project management standpoint?

They exceeded our expectations. Caity-Shea and Javiera were just so wonderful to work with; they were very responsive. Plus, working with them was fun!

What did you find most impressive about them?

I personally really appreciated how digestible they made the project. It was a bit of a beast, but Javier and Caity-Shea really broke down everything into tangible steps while also giving us the space to ask questions. As a client, I really appreciated that so much. They are now helping us with our next report.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there’s nothing I can think of.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Futurehaus' processes help get ahead of any challenges that might arise. Just follow the team's lead.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a founding co-chair for trafficking and exploitation non-profit.

What challenge were you trying to address with Futurehaus?

We needed a website to showcase our mission and vision.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We came up with the vision and goals for the coalition. One of the co-chairs worked with Futurehaus to design the website. She had a general creative vision and wrote the copy for the website.

The team executed on our vision for the website. The website helps educate the general public about issues around commercial sexual exploitation, features profiles of survivors of sexual exploitation, and serves as a vehicle to encourage additional organizations to join with us.

Futurehaus also did website maintenance after it was launched.

What is the team composition?

Javier (CEO & Founder) was our main contact.

How did you come to work with Futurehaus?

One of our founding co-chairs knew Javier and brought his team on board to do the project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from July 2016–December 2017.

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

The look and feel of the website are cutting edge, and the quality is great. Our two key metrics were feedback from visitors to the site, and growth in the number of organizations who joined us after launch. 

How did Futurehaus perform from a project management standpoint?

They were responsive in every aspect. We gave them some crazy deadlines, and they did everything in their power to meet them, which they did, incredibly. They were willing to work all hours of the night in order to do so. We communicated via email, phone, and also had some in-person meetings.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The quality of their work is outstanding. They responded to our needs and challenges very well and had a deep understanding of the issues we faced due to the sensitivity of the subject we deal with. We were very pleased with both the skill and the compassion they showed in their design and execution of the website.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO and founder of Jugl LLC, a startup building software to make it easier to be a working parent.

For what projects/services did your company hire Futurehaus?

Revise mobile app and backend software architecture and provide interim CTO services.

What were your goals for this project?

Re-define our Minimum Viable Product and refine the product roadmap to help us launch successfully.

How did you select this vendor?

Javier was recommended to me by two separate people that I respect.

Describe the project in detail.

Javier worked with us for the better part of a year, bringing in other engineers as needed. We did discovery, refines user stories, built an MVP, did more research and ultimately decided not to build the product in the originally imagined way.

What was the team composition?

Javier worked with us for the better part of a year, bringing in other engineers as needed.

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

Futurehaus was able to build an MVP version of our app in months when we had failed to do so after working on it for almost year.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Javier and his team are accurate, trustworthy, and dedicated. It felt like they were a part of our team. I often wished they were!!!

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Work got done right the first time AND (perhaps more importantly), Javier advises with integrity as to whether development work should be done to begin with (vs. trying lower-cost prototype testing and other leaner options first).

Are there any areas for improvement?

The only area for improvement (which I did discuss with Javier) was that I would have preferred to know in advance that a major architecture changes was being made.

This was in the first month or so of the project. Like all relationships, our communication become more efficient and effective over time. In no way would this effect my willingness to enthusiastically recommend Futurehaus and Javier.

Please describe your company and your position there.

My name is Rocio Lane Founder CEO at Cleancio. I'm on a mission to disrupt the vacation rental cleaning industry, one cleaning at the time. Cleancio is an on-demand vacation rental cleaning company that services the nation's top property management companies, host, investors, realtors and home owners.

For what projects/services did your company hire Futurehaus?

Our initial solution was not user friendly and it required a lot of time to monitor cleaning assignments and communicate with our housekeepers on the field.

What were your goals for this project?

We ambition a clean, easy to use, bilingual mobile app for our housekeepers. Our main goal is to save time and help our teams to communicate and complete assignments on the most effective way.

How did you select this vendor?

Cleancio interviewed multiple vendors before hiring Futurehaus. We also interview Futurehaus' current and past clients,. All of them strongly recommended their services.

Describe the project in detail.

Futurehaus made it look so easy! All the team members are very professional and organized. We had daily stand ups, meetings prior, during and after each sprint.

What was the team composition?

We were assigned a program manager who schedule all the meetings and make sure all the team was assigned properly. We definitely had a dream team: Product and Technical Lead, Scrum Master, two designers and 2 engineers. Multiple members of the team were bilingual which it was extremely important for this project.

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

Absolutely! Our teams were extremely happy with the mobile app (iOS and Android). Productivity increase by 200%. With our previous solution it will take us weeks or months to train our team to use the app but now it just as easy to download and watch a tutorial.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We were very impressed with how organized everything was. We had excellent customer service, all our questions were answered on a timely matter. User interviews in Spanish were not an issue at all because part of Futurehaus team is bilingual.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Adaptability. Futurehaus is creating a very innovative approach to bring ideas into reality.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We had a very clear plan for the project and it was delivered as promised. We truly enjoy working with Futurehaus and now were planning our next project!