LGNDX | The Product Innovation Studio

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the president and CGO of an AI solutions firm serving federal customers, primarily the Department of Defense. We build custom AI solutions, leveraging the Google tech stack.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with LGNDX | The Product Innovation Studio?

We excelled in rapid prototyping and utilizing commercial tools. However, we recognized a gap in our UX/UI design capabilities and required external support for prototyping and visual design in order to WOW the customer and sell them on a broader vision.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

LGNDX's prototyping and consulting were pivotal in securing Phase Two for our generative AI training product. Their customer discovery and design work, including a compelling UI/UX concept, directly influenced the customer's decision. We'll partner with them again starting August 2025 to enhance the system with engaging, gamified experiences.

What is the team composition?

We worked with Mike and Will, supported by other LGNDX team members.

How did you come to work with LGNDX | The Product Innovation Studio?

I met LGNDX | The Product Innovation Studio through my previous company. They were our primary design partner for a data analytics product we built for the Navy.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with LGNDX in August they completed their initial work by December. We will re-engage with them later this year.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They exceeded expectations. We got no negative feedback about LGNDX | The Product Innovation Studio's work. Everybody agreed that it looked way better than anything we could create internally.

How did LGNDX | The Product Innovation Studio perform from a project management standpoint?

LGNDX | The Product Innovation Studio was good at project management. They never missed a deadline and were also good at communicating. We used Zoom, Google Meet, and Slack to communicate.

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

Will, our project manager, did an outstanding job. He kept the project on schedule and reliably met every commitment, contributing significantly to our success.

What did you find most impressive about them?

LGNDX | The Product Innovation Studio took a consultative approach to understanding the design needs. They understood what we wanted and added value to the technical solution through design.

There are a lot of UX/UI design firms out there. Most of them will build whatever you tell them to create. The thing that differentiates LGNDX | The Product Innovation Studio is that they take the time to make discoveries with the product's end users to ensure they fully understand what design features will add value.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I don't have any specific critiques.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Understand that LGNDX | The Product Innovation Studio delivers high-value UI/UX solutions through a rigorous discovery process with end users. They are a premium provider who have specific experience delivering products to defense and national security customers. If your project requires extensive discovery and a strategic approach to product development, LGNDX excels.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the product manager for a supply chain risk management and illumination company focused on the US government, specifically the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community. We identify people who support government acquisition programs by showing them who’s in their supply chain, what those providers produce in terms of parts or services, and how that might impact their programs.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with LGNDX?

We were contractually obligated to provide a frontend product or a portal to present the data we had gathered to one of our government end clients. We didn’t have the organic capacity or personnel to design, develop, and produce that frontend at the time, so we needed to contract someone to provide that.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

LGNDX has designed and built a portal from scratch. Our main end client was in the room with folks from our team and LGNDX designers to discuss what was needed from them and what problems they were trying to solve. We've gone through various co-designing opportunities and exercises, from wireframes to MVPs to a developed product.

LGNDX continues to provide net-new features, basic improvements, and maintenance. The web portal itself is built with Laravel, a PHP framework. They have deployed the portal using AWS Elastic Beanstalk.

We've renewed our commitment to further developing features within the portal. In 2024, we shipped 15 net-new feature sets, five of which are from brand-new data sources.

What is the team composition?

We typically have access to 4–6 people, including 2–3 software engineers, frontend developers, and 2 designers. This depends on what we're doing at the time, whether we're designing a feature or expanding or maintaining the task. Our go-to person is a product strategist, who is my main connection to LGNDX.

How did you come to work with LGNDX?

I can't answer how we found them; that predates my time with the company.

How much have you invested with them?

We've spent over $2 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We've been working with them since May 2020, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The biggest success mark on our end is the average of less than one month from design work to MVP and implementation for a feature.

We have a bug reporting system, and LGNDX typically responds within an hour to acknowledge that they're addressing the problem. Regardless of the complexity of the problem, we've never experienced an outage that lasted more than a few hours. We've never seen a bug that wasn't fixed within a day if we flagged it as mission-critical. If we identify it, we work it into the backlog and track and manage it.

How did LGNDX perform from a project management standpoint?

They perform exceedingly well. They use GitLab to track their sprints. We have a shared Slack channel with LGNDX and Tier 2 Group employees to keep track of progress and communicate bugs quickly. We also ask simple questions about data provision. We meet weekly, sometimes more, and conduct those meetings over Zoom.

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

Ryan has been there through the whole process. We have a great partnership.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I've been thoroughly impressed with how they've been able to embody and capture the mission of our organization and then make it their own. We're entrusting someone else to build our product and help shape it. We provide the vision for how we want to help our customers achieve mission success and how we can help them answer questions in a way they wouldn't be able to otherwise. LGNDX's level of ownership in what they build, even though it might not be their product, is very impressive. It makes it fun to work with them; you can tell they care about it.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there aren't any.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you come to them with a very clear vision of what you want to do, they will absolutely serve as an enabler and a force multiplier. They're more than willing to start with you from ground zero, but if you want to get the absolute most out of working with them, come to them with a thought and tell them what you want to solve so you can start building things.