Happening Design Studio

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the chairman of UMO Design, a design community. We organize events like conferences and design contests to bring awareness to design. We also have a design school to bring design education to the grassroots level.

We’re a strong community of designers specialized in different fields like UX design, visual design, and industrial design. Some of our members are user researchers, and others are experts and mentors.

Our community has evolved to become a platform where designers help each other enhance their understanding of design and improve their careers, guiding each other and bringing talent together to share their design stories and approaches.

What challenge were you trying to address with Happening Design Studio?

We needed someone to develop our platform. Among our requirements were implementations and tools for ticketing, managing conferences, and engaging with the community.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Happening developed our platform. On it, we have different initiatives and resources like conferences, contests, mentoring programs, internships, and talent-matching programs. We also have a design school and offer various career opportunities.

Happening helped us put everything together, unifying our communication and allowing users to see their involvement in our community. From our side, we can see the analytics of community growth and engagement. We can also fundraise by using certain payment gateways that they integrated.

Putting everything together was a great challenge for them because ours is an international platform. We have people from different time zones coming in and using different currencies.

Happening also helped us with our recent design contest, creating a website where people could submit entries for us to evaluate and curate. On it, we also had a jury come in a do an online presentation.

Happening’s involvement has not only been around design but also around business processes; they’ve done a great job learning about the process itself. Conducting an international design contest wasn’t easy, but we made it more streamlined and simplified. To achieve this, they provided us with presentations explaining how to do the process more streamlined, take the entries, and do the curation.

Overall, Happening helped us with the whole process. Besides the website, they created marketing material to post on social media and an application to receive entries and certifications.

What is the team composition?

I’m in contact with Happening’s co-founder and a team of 4–5 people. Their team includes copywriters and visual designers.

How did you come to work with Happening Design Studio?

We came across many companies when looking for a provider. Happening had actually done a presentation at one of our conferences, so we knew them beforehand. For this project, they got in touch with us.

After looking at several agencies and their work, we felt they were really honest, not very expensive, and very passionate. I gave them a small task, and they did a good job, so we tasked them to develop the rest of the platform.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent less than $10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in June 2021, and our engagement is ongoing. Throughout this time, Happening has been in touch with us in several different capacities. Before this project, they were voluntarily helping us with our other things.

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

I’m impressed with Happening’s commitment and work. Their cost is also reasonable, so they’re a good investment, and they deliver quality work. They follow a rapid and lean process, and they involve us a lot in it, which is very helpful.

How did Happening Design Studio perform from a project management standpoint?

Happening’s team is very enthusiastic, and they give us constant feedback; we have a very iterative process. They also work within our timelines so that we don’t lose control of the project.

Happening is also very transparent; they don’t hide anything. For example, one of their teammates had COVID-19, and they immediately informed us. At the time, we didn’t have the option of extending the deadline because our contest dates had been already announced. However, they managed to put in extra effort to deliver on time, and everything went smoothly.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Since we’re a design community, we’re not easily convinced by any design. However, they did a great job, and they worked smartly by involving us from the beginning. Additionally, their communication is good, so we don’t have to worry about anything.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing I’d have them improve.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Start your engagement with a company by discussing the budget, and don’t just go with the vendor with good visual designs. You also need to understand every vendor’s work and process.

If you’re looking for good value for your money, a business process design, an intuitive UI, and a transparent working process, Happening is really good. Their prices are very competitive, and they deliver.