Indicius

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the owner and lead consultant of SORBIE. We’re a UX and UI agency based in Chicago. We primarily help financial capital clients as well as health care and data governance clients.

What challenge were you trying to address with Indicius?

I’ve hired them in different capacities, but the original project was a UI for a financial client in the retirement and investment management space. We had to prove a product concept through design and experience for users so it could be approved to go into production.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Typically, their approach includes researching the customer and their product itself to get a good understanding. This is mostly envisioning the future product when it’s released. Then, they design a UX, which may be a combination of meeting market competitors and their experience or developed something customized.

We’ll then design and prototype the entire product so it can be prototyped with users. User input may then be included at various levels so the prototype can be updated to resolve whatever issues occurred during the testing. Once that’s approved, people come in to do final reviews include engineering and product managers and people who prepare it for building.

I’ve had some engineering experience with Indicius; they’ve built 3–5 products. My company also does engineering so I haven’t used their capabilities in that way for every project. Finally, the project is broken out into an engineering and development effort managed by Kanban with a scrum system.

How did you come to work with Indicius?

I was hired to take a startup project and prototype it. They specifically wanted to near-shore their services so we were tasked with outsourcing people from Argentina. In fact, I went to Argentina to meet with team members for that project. Hernan (Founder) and some of his designers were some of the people I targeted before I went down there. I interviewed a dozen design groups and chose to work with 2–3, including Indicius. I’ve worked with them ever since.

How much have you invested with them?

I’ve spent around $50,00–$100,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve worked together since October 2014.

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

In our early days, we would work on one project at a time and then move to another one back-to-back. Now, it’s common for us to have multiple projects on an ongoing basis. The amount of work I use them for has certainly gone up. Our businesses have increased together.

How did Indicius perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re really great. They may not be subject-matter experts in every area but not every client needs that. In my experience, they’ve been really good at communicating if there are any issues.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Overall, they’re extremely nice, responsive, and forgiving. They’ve been really great to deal with when problems arise. While many people offer services and pull away when things get tough, Indicius and Hernan have great over the years. They’re sensible and able to understand and empathize and deal with you as a partner.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the PR Manager for Digital Health at the Hasso Plattner Institute. We do digital engineering.

What challenge were you trying to address with Indicius?

There were two different projects, both centered around branding. We’d created a new institute that needed an entirely new brand, logo, and website. The other project was developing a brand and professional identity for a research consortium.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The first project Indicius tackled was the brand development for our new institute. We collaborated together to create new guidelines. The team designed all aspects of the brand, including the logo and other visual elements like letterheads. We also had a large event, for which they helped us create a big poster, banners, and brochures including the agenda and speakers. Also for the event, Indicius ran a few social media posts.

Currently, we’re working on the website for the new institute.

What is the team composition?

Virginia (Operations Manager) is our project manager, and my main point of contact. Most of the designs were handled by one person.

How did you come to work with Indicius?

They’d worked with one of our colleagues in New York on several projects and were highly recommended.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $10,000 - $25,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked on the first project from July–October 2019. Our collaboration is ongoing as we continue working on the website.

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

We used the event to introduce the brand, and the amount of positive feedback from people that attended was amazing. They thought it looked great, and they were able to see it as an add-on to our existing brand easily.

How did Indicius perform from a project management standpoint?

The communication is smooth and easy, even though English isn’t the native language to either of us. We usually keep in touch with phone calls, and we’ve begun doing weekly calls to help keep momentum going. They’re responsive—when I needed something done by the next day during the event, Indicius was quick to understand and got it done.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m most impressed with the ease of working together even though we’re on different continents. They produce quick results. It was helpful that we talk instead of using emails, which are easy to get turned around and have miscommunication. It is far superior to my experience with other firms.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an associate professor at a university.

What challenge were you trying to address with Indicius?

We were designing a web-based software tool that allows people to run genetic analysis on clinical data that we have available from patients enrolled in studies at our university. We were looking for a company to help with the design, look and feel, and user flow for that web app.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Indicius focused on the design on the web app. We developed the functionality for the most part. They started with some interviews with my staff before conducting design exercises to get an idea of the type of branding, our mission, and our goals. The exercises lasted a week to figure out our design’s intention and the image we wanted to portray. After that phase, they came back with a few different options.

After optimizing and choosing one, we executed the design with their team building all of the assets. They also made a demonstration project of how those assets would be integrated within the site. There is a codebook and design book for our team to follow, in case future updates need to be made or if we want to understand the modules further.

The app allows users to search through clinical data rapidly. The design side provides navigation tools, filtering and data browsing, and an area to actually do the genetic analysis. There are also visual elements like displaying distributions of clinical variables like ages, comorbidity data, and the results of genetic analysis.

What is the team composition?

Hernan (CEO & Founder) was the initial point of contact in the setup phase. There was another point of contact during development. In total, I worked with around four people.

How did you come to work with Indicius?

They were referred to me by my colleague at Mount Sinai who had used them for design work.

How much have you invested with them?

We invested between $15,000–$30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with Indicius from August–December 2019.

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

We’ve recently integrated all of the design elements. The look and feel are great. The design elements are strong.

How did Indicius perform from a project management standpoint?

All of it was managed well. The communication from their team was great. We usually used email and video conference calls. They were pretty responsive.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have a good process. Their product is simple, which I like.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We didn’t do a lot of development because we have developers in-house. Indicius did do a little implementation with a few of the modules, but it’s not as efficient. On the design side, they’re extremely strong, but the development side isn’t. We have developers, so it wasn’t a big issue.

Introduce your business and what you do there

I am the CEO of Litebox, a software development agency.

What challenge were you trying to address Indicius?

We work in development, so we hired them to cover the design portion of our work for our clients.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Indicius has worked with us on multiple projects. Their work has mostly involved UI/UX design, UX strategy, and design sprints.

What is the team composition?

That depends on the project and on their availability. We’ve worked with about 10 different teammates throughout our partnership.

How did you come to work with Indicius?

We wanted to find a balance between working with the biggest agencies in the country and working with freelancers. It was hard to find a balance both in costs and quality. We found Indicius by asking around among the entrepreneur community.

Their CEO showed us their portfolio and how with a relatively smaller budget they could develop high-quality designs. We started testing them with small projects and the results were excellent, which is why we decided to continue working with them.

How much have you invested with them?

Last year we spent around $80,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in 2017, and our engagement is ongoing.

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

Indicius is so professional and open. Whenever our developers have any questions related to design, they are always available and willing to guide us, making our work a lot easier. Another thing that has been great is the quality of the projects.

All of our clients are always impressed with the quality of their design. Also, when we have their support in workshops, all of our attendees are very happy about how they conduct them and the value they provide.

How did Indicius perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management is one of their greatest strengths. We’ve had projects with time constraints, but their project manager is very talented and is great at managing these kinds of situations. We’ve never had any issues in that regard. 

Even if we’ve had difficult projects and clients they are great at handling everything. They use Basecamp for project management. As for deadlines, in the three years we have worked with them, they have never missed a single one.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They offer us the quality of a big, solid team and the agility of a smaller team. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, none that I can think of.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a home services application that allows customers to find help for home projects without needing to search for contractors, manage bids, or research the scope of a project. I am the Director of Marketing and Brand Management.

My job during our project with Indicius was to determine what we wanted our brand to look and feel like and work with the design team at Indicius to execute that vision. I oversee all of our messaging, logo design, and website design for our projects. It's my job to ensure that anything we post or distribute matches our brand.

For what projects/services did your company hire Indicius?

We hired them for two things: logo design (including a logo, white paper, and brand guidelines booklet) and designing an app landing page.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goal for the logo design was to create a logo that stood out among the competition while still communicating the tone associated with out brand. For the app landing page, our goal was to create a landing page that targeted homeowners and increased brand awareness as well as drive traffic to our download page. We wanted our landing page to feel fresh and dynamic as well.

How did you select this vendor?

We found them on Crew.co and chose them after reviewing a few other teams. I liked their clean and adaptable design style and felt like they would be a good fit for our design.

Describe the project in detail.

When the both projects first started we had a phone meeting and I put together a design brief for their team. The brief included background information on our brand/project, our brand statement, message, target audience, the tone of the project, competition, requirements, and ideal timeline. In the logo design brief I included a handful of logos I felt had characteristics that I'd like to see in our logo. I included the same type of examples for the landing page design brief. Their team was very engaged with the brief and used it as a touchpoint as the projects continued.

At the end of the logo project they delivered a brand guide, logo design, and a white paper which were all included in the initial brief. Working on this project went very well and I felt like their designs hit the mark so well that we should continue to hire them for the landing page design. For the landing page project, the delivered a fully ready landing page with working animations as well as some illustrations for our marketing. The landing page they delivered was great and really stood out compared to our competition.

What was the team composition?

I believe for each project there were 3 or 4 people involved in the project. We all worked together over the phone and through Basecamp which I really liked.

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

Our engagement levels were much higher than expected when we released the initial project on Startengine.com. Our investors were very interested in our branding and landing page design. It was and is still a major talking point when we ask them what they like about us.

We also were approached by Zeit.co to have a case-study written about our project. The designs that Indicius created made us stand out in a way that people have taken notice of.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The Indicius team was great at communicating with me about the project. We used Basecamp to share files, manage goals, etc. We chatted about expectations and goals throughout the project and continued to work together and share feedback as the project progressed.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I was and still am very impressed with their design work and ability to listen to feedback and implement it well. We went over a few drafts of our logo and each time they listened to our feedback and asked thoughtful questions to try to understand what exactly we had in mind. I also find their ability to work with team remotely impressive.

They were very communicative and were always willing to chat about issues or ideas.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Working with them was great and in the end both our logo design project including the logo, white paper, and brand guide as well as our landing page project turned out better than I'd have hoped.

Like I said communication was great throughout the project but I think using a different project management software instead of Basecamp to communicate might be a better option for future projects. Their communication was excellent but I think there is better software out there for these types of projects that they could use.