KIAT.SG

Please describe your company and your position there.

iSense is a startup dedicated to digitizations services and B2B marketplace for flavors. As an investor I am personally supporting this initiative acting as Chief Information Officer throughout the early life of the company.

For what projects/services did your company hire KIAT.SG?

We needed to quickly enable an MVP for this project. We were initially looking for a Ux designer, and were lucky to meet KIAT.SG since their involvement in the early stages has enabled them to fully understand our business logics and requirements for a totally ad hoc value proposal at a fair price.

What were your goals for this project?

Have a quick go to market through a complete MVP, very close to a final product

How did you select this vendor?

Well. We asked different actors or colleagues in the IT world, and our CEO who was then living in Singapore had a discussion with KIAT.SG among others, and there was kind of an immediate match.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Well we explained our business model, we had a number of workshops, KIAT.SG came with relevant collaborative tools to establish Uxs, establish user stories. Also, at a point in time our BE and FE partner failed us, and KIAT.SG helped us to quickly find alternate cheaper and very valuable partners to replace them right on the spot.

What was the team composition?

The team was initially composed of several Ux designers, and ourselves acting as Scrum masters / requirements owners.

Then we failed to secure our own Back End and Front End dev partners, and KIAT.SG secured some alternate solution for us, and offered us to have as well a technical coordinator to bridge between UX, us and dev, using ad hoc collaborative tools, which prove to be very efficient even managing things remotely for a worldwide distributed organization.

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

Well, this is very clear. Thanks to KIAT.SG, we managed to deliver our MVP fulffiling all requirements on time, at 50% of the initially assumed budget.

Also, we have established a full trust organization, and when we needed for financial reasons to reduce our spendings, negotiations were totally constructive and transparent, and KIAT.SG never failed us in any area.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We were interacting through Slack, Trello for user stories management, and had regular conf call when we felt the need for it. Given their early involvement and complete understanding of our requirements, we almost felt like KIAT.SG and our other partners managed trhough them were part of our teams -)

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Flexible, skilled, forward thinking, reactive, innovative, easy.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Maybe, but I am still looking for it. Honestly, they were the perfect match for us.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the manager of a travel company.

What challenge were you trying to address with KIAT.SG?

I needed a design partner for a two-part project.

What was the scope of their involvement?

For the first part of the project, they helped us do content auditing, site auditing, and competitive benchmarking. The deliverables for that were a report of the findings, analysis, and recommendations, as well as the raw material of the audits.

For the second part of the project, they created designs for chosen pages based on the recommendations. They also did card sorting and usability testing. Based on the findings, they did iterative prototyping on a second round of designs, which was the final deliverable. We also went over wireframes and sketches together. The whole project was 8 weeks.

What is the team composition?

I worked with three people.  

How did you come to work with KIAT.SG?

I went through a standard RFP process, and we got several different agencies to come in and speak to us. Based on their presentations and vibe, we decided to go with KIAT.SG. They had experience working on a somewhat similar project, which they showed us in that first meeting. I had also asked for recommendations and KIAT.SG was one of the agencies recommended by people in the industry.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $35,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in October until November 2019.

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

This project was about an exploratory design concept and getting to know the agency to see if we would like to work with them in the future. In terms of the analysis of the research and testing though, it was very thorough and very well-documented. We could see that a lot of thought was put into it. They dove deep. It was really great in terms of analysis and organization too.

I judged the designs more on the thought and concepts behind them rather than being real eye-heavy. They thought through the workflow and the UX side of it quite well. In terms of the flows, of how they came into the page, where they click out to it, it was well done as well.

How did KIAT.SG perform from a project management standpoint?

They work very independently while still communicating back to us where they were at. We could let them run at their own pace because the communication was quite clear. I was speaking with Kiat (Design Coach/Principal Designer, KIAT.SG) directly, who's the founder and main project manager. I was also speaking with Kate (Product Designer & Researcher, KIAT.SG) and Yvonne (UX/Product Designer, KIAT.SG).

We had a retrospective at the end of the session, which I think was helpful for both them and us so we can figure out ways we can work better together in the future. Most of our communication was done through Slack and Google Drive.

What did you find most impressive about them?

There was a lot of trust and collaboration within their team itself, which made it easier for us to work with them. It came to a point where they felt like an extension of our own internal design team. There was a lot of communication that allowed us to be flexible and adapt if needed. It felt like we were on the same page, working towards the project together.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There were some things that could have been improved that came up in the retrospective. We discussed them internally, but there wasn’t anything overcritical to where I wouldn’t work with them again.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It’s helpful to give them some background and context so that they know what they’re aiming for. In some areas, it was good that they could help reflect back what it is we wanted. It showed us that they digested the material well.