McKnight Media

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the COO of Space Inch

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Custom software design and development

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire McKnight Media to accomplish?

• UI Design
• UX Design
• Prototyping

SOLUTION

How did you find McKnight Media?

Referral

Why did you select McKnight Media over others?

• High ratings
• Close to my geographic location
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from McKnight Media were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

What was your primary form of communication with McKnight Media?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

We are designing and developing a suite of apps for a medical analytics company that has outdated design and needed a complete refresh of all their products. We needed to conduct a full UX research, wireframing, design, and protoype process for the client before beginning engineering. We did the work by product, and we also built a design system to inform the complete component library.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• Tight timelines, discreet design milestones for wireframing, mockups, and prototypes for multiple products.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

They delivered everything on time and within budget. They were very attentive to every detail, asked excellent questions, understood the need to occasionally pivot from original plans, and work together as a team. They were excellent communicators and wonderful to work with.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They are incredibly thoughtful about their work. They are principled, well informed of industry trends and norms, great eye for design aesthetics, and practical in their approach to design research and implementation. They think about the user first, they ask great questions, and they are excellent virtual collaborators. They are truly a joy to work with.

Are there any areas for improvement or something McKnight Media could have done differently?

Nothing at all. Terrific work all around, and we wouldn't change a thing.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the UX director for SquadLocker. We offer a suite of online solutions that allow users to provide their organizations with high-quality custom decorating apparel.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with McKnight Media?

The goal was to build a foundational application that served as the configuration hub for products, services, and external-facing apps. We needed to develop online stores that users could stock with products configured within the internal-facing app.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

McKnight Media has built the application from scratch. The app is a hub for everything, so a wide range of things can be configured within the application. It allows to configure products and customize items that need to be designed for the online store — any artwork or QA activity required for the products before they’re out in the marketplace. It can manage users, organizations and its online stores, inventory, scheduling, and so on.

For development, McKnight has used all the standard UX and design tools, as well as the latest industry technology. They’re currently using Figma for UX and software design. Also, sometimes they have to interview or consult with stakeholders to ensure they’re meeting our needs.

What is the team composition?

I’ve mostly worked with Gordon (CEO & Lead Product Designer). More recently, they added someone to the team.

How did you come to work with McKnight Media?

The relationship with McKnight Media predates me, so I wasn’t part of the hiring process. However, we continue to work with them for their design quality and attention to detail.

What is the status of this engagement?

I think the relationship with McKnight Media started at least a year before I came on board, which was in May 2019. We’re still working together.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

When we started, we didn’t have any established success metrics except for the completion of projects. Right now, we’re still in the process of establishing some baseline metrics for UX. However, we’re satisfied with the quality of their work. They’ve invested in our success since the beginning, and it shows in their efforts. They’re a positive influence.

How did McKnight Media perform from a project management standpoint?

We manage our projects with Jira and Confluence. Once we assign a task, they manage its progress along with other project managers and me. In summary, they’re responsible for their day-to-day tasks.

What did you find most impressive about them?

It’s their dedication to the process and the effort they put into getting it right. They’re willing to iterate and revise what’s necessary to deliver the best quality. Also, their design capabilities and UX knowledge are outstanding.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I struggle to find anything that they could improve. Everything’s going well.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

McKnight Media will be invested in your company’s success. They’ll take time to understand your business and design digital products and UX that’ll meet your users’ needs. Moreover, their team will rise until they get it right.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

GIS Cloud is a cloud platform that enables real-time mapping and collaboration. My position is product-oriented CEO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire McKnight Media?

For some time our users wanted to have a crucial feature included in our web and mobile applications which would allow them to collect and update multiple data in the field and connect different data tables to one another.

This would allow them to establish more efficient field workflows for data collection, inspection and management.

Our internal UX/UI resources were limited due to multiple ongoing projects, which is why we decided to expand our team by hiring McKnight Media because of their vast experience and expertise in similar and complex products. This helped us to accelerate this effort and development.

What were your goals for this project?

This new feature will allow us to retain existing customers as well as acquire significant clients to expand our business.

We are constantly improving our products to provide more capabilities in field work optimizations and geospatial data management.

We identified the “Related Tables” feature as one of key improvements.

SOLUTION

How did you select McKnight Media?

Our Product designer has met different agencies and UX//UI designers through her network (conferences, meet-ups). Among them was the McKnight Media team.

Through conversations and looking at their portfolio which showcased similar products, she was convinced they have the knowledge and experience necessary to work on our products which are complex and industry specific.

Due to their professional and also friendly attitude, showing their willingness to dive deep into our product and understand our business goals, they also seemed like a good fit into our processes and company culture.

When we decided to expand our UX resources, our product designer recommended McKnight Media as the best fit for our needs. After a couple of interviews we decided to hire them.

Describe the project in detail.

The Project is a joint collaboration between our product designer and McKnight Media.

We used internal resources to perform a detailed UX research of our current user base and key clients that would benefit from the Project to draft initial specifications for UX/UI project.

After the initial research our Product designer singled out a number of use cases and user stories that we wanted to cover with the Project. This was the basis for shaping Project scope and UX discussion.

The next step was a workshop which consisted of the following internal and external stakeholders:

1.  CEO
2. Product Designer
3. Head of QA
4. Head of Engineering
5. Head of Business Development
6. GIS Cloud Partners
7. McKnight Media team

The workshop was instrumental in shaping the feature and on-board McKnight Media on the Project. Through it we intensively discussed use cases and how the new feature fits them. It also helped us to communicate scope across multiple stakeholders.

Even though this project involved different apps and features across the platform and a high technical complexity in order to create and design the apps and their functionality, the McKnight Media team quickly understood how our current platform works, its advantages and limitations, and was able to immediately start working on the designs.

The scope was defined as an extension of our current mobile application (which included refactoring existing one) and two web applications. The McKnight Media team used findings of our research to design the initial screens for the mobile app.

Due to their experience in similar products they were able to rapidly translate user stories into screens, following complex user flows and covering tricky edge cases.

Upon each phase of the design, our Product designer and sometimes myself would have sync meetings with the McKnight media team to go through all potential loopholes, and work out together on issues discovered during the design process.

Every time, we dived deeper in the product together and the McKnight Media team was always ready to offer the best solutions, and willing to adjust or extend the design according to new insights we provided.

As our apps have a variety of functions and features, there is always something new to discover so it was very important for us to work with designers who possess a high level of technical as well as industry knowledge, and are willing to learn about all platform details and limitations.

The McKnight Media team finished UX/UI designs for mobile app and created four high fidelity interactive prototypes for user testing, which we are now performing internally. At the same time, they are continuously working on web applications.

What was the team composition?

The team was made from our Product Designer and two members from McKnight Media (UX Lead and UX Designer).

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The Project is still ongoing as it is divided in three parts: mobile app, improvements on web app for data management, and improvements on web app for building and connecting forms.

The first part is completed on the UX/UI part and we are currently performing internal usability testing and interviews to validate the design.

So far, our clients and partners are delighted with the power of new features, as well as the intuitiveness of the app, and we believe it will make a big difference for our (and our partner’s) business.

The second part of the project is in its final stage of the design, and according to the feedback of a few partners, the changes will provide major advancements in their daily operations.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

As we had internal UX resources (our Product Designer), this helped to increase efficiency and communication between our company and McKnight Media.

Our Product Designer provided the team with research, specifications and product knowledge, as well as communicated our expectations and quality feedback to McKnight Media.

In turn, the McKnight Media team crafted elaborate designs and interactions, covering every detail, and came up with feature solutions which covered all provided user stories.

They made sure to keep in mind and solve all edge cases as well. Not to mention our Product designer truly enjoyed working with their team, and also learned a lot, allowing her to include new knowledge in her work and processes.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their quick understanding of our product, company and needs. Due to their experience they provided great ideas and improvements.

The communication with McKnight Media was exceptional as they are very professional and pleasant to work with.

Are there any areas for improvement?

This was our first experience with hiring external associates for UX/UI. It was an effort to keep the scope under control.

We learned a lot throughout this process, for instance that we need to define a clear scope and control the project development, which is something we will continue to improve in the future.

McKnight Media provided us great feedback on this in an effort to make our future collaboration even better.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a small startup based in Dublin, Ireland — we also have offices in Croatia and Switzerland. We create MVPs for startups. I’m the CEO of the company, we started in 2019, we’re 15 people strong.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with McKnight Media?

We didn’t have designers or UX teammates on board when we started the company, so we needed someone to handle that part of the work for our clients.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our client had some designs done, but the work wasn’t complete. McKnight Media helps create some new screens, icons, backgrounds, and so on. Even though the original design had been done by someone else, McKnight Media has built an almost completely new product — they’ve worked as though they’re the first designers on the project.

The first step was to assess the project and see which designs were done, which were good and which weren’t. The second step was to create all the missing assets.

Our team implements the screens after they are approved, and McKnight Media does their own testing and notifies us when a screen has been implemented incorrectly, an image was too big or too small, an icon wasn’t in the right place, and other things.

After the review, they’ve also assisted us with additional requirements from the client. They’ve helped us with the UX work, and have created a type of guideline on implementing new functionalities so that features will be simple to use and good-looking.

What is the team composition?

Gordon (CEO & Lead Product Designer) handled everything initially, and two additional team members have been brought on since we’ve reached the later stages. Gordon interacts with us, reviews all the work, and interacts with the client. 

How did you come to work with McKnight Media?

We were in the same circles, and Gordon had worked on other projects that we were working on. We considered a couple of other companies for this project, but McKnight Media was the quickest to give us a proposal. They also coached us on UX and what the project phases should be in their proposal. 

How much have you invested with them?

The cost of their work is around $15,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with McKnight Media in June 2019 and the project is now in the last stage. The work is more or less done, but they’re continuing to provide support and additional design work. We might have a couple of tasks for them during the next few months, so we’re still ongoing.  

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our client has been wowed by the work; they’ve commented on how McKnight Media has knocked the work out of the park. The client is really happy with the work, overall. McKnight Media is part of the project, so their impact isn’t easily measurable, but our developers and management have all been praising their team, so it’s been really good for us.

How did McKnight Media perform from a project management standpoint?

We’re using Jira for the whole project. We assign McKnight Media high-level tasks, and they have their own task management system where they chop those into smaller tasks. I believe they use Productive, which is a really good tool. It’s similar to Jira, but it also focuses on how much money and employee time is being spent.

They’re really fast in their delivery. If they say that something will take two weeks, we can expect it to show up well before the two-week period. They’re super easy to communicate with and down to earth. I know that anything I give them will be done on time and within budget, and, if something creeps up, I’ll be notified well before the deadline in order to adjust.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their willingness to elaborate on complex tasks and not use too many big words make them impressive. They proactively find what’s currently missing from whatever we’re discussing. McKnight Media identified the missing screens on this project, which was really valuable for us. Had we gone back to the client without a password recovery screen, for example, they wouldn’t have been super happy.

We can see that they put a lot of effort into every task we give them and they always go well above what’s necessary — that’s helped us tremendously. We don’t have to worry about budgets and things being delivered on time, so we can focus on other things. If everyone were like that, I’d be a millionaire already.

Are there any areas they could improve?

If there’s no room for improvement, then there’s something missing from the picture, but I really don’t know what they could improve. I’m completely and utterly satisfied with McKnight Media’s services — maybe they could take me to lunch more often.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Anyone who wants to work with McKnight Media should trust them and let go of the reins. At the end of the day, they won’t do anything out of budget or out of scope without prior notification. I’ve worked with a bunch of designers, and McKnight Media is by far the best.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m currently holding the position of product owner at Rimac Automobili which is an electric vehicle hypercar company. We started in 2011 and are currently building our latest hypercar product.

I’m the product owner for the connected vehicle solution and for the underlying platform from the vehicle connectivity back to the sole user platform, so the mobile app and the engineering tool for data analytics for the connected vehicle. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with McKnight Media?

We needed some help with UI/UX designs. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our OEM dashboard is a tool for analyzing data coming from connected vehicles. The whole project started in 2017, and we had been using our in-house UI/UX designers. However, due to the scope of the project, as it massively grew last year, we needed some help from the UI/UX design aspect. We empowered McKnight Media to help us out with UI/UX and they became our only designers for web design.

What is the team composition?

We initially had one designer, who was also the CEO of the company. As our demands grew, the team supporting us grew as well. We’ve now been working with three designers.

How did you come to work with McKnight Media?

We had an internal competition between our internal designers and outsiders. We came to know about McKnight Media through some great recommendations from several colleagues. When we started talking to them, it was most important that they understood what we wanted to achieve because it’s a super niche product.

It was really important that our UI designer had the knowledge we needed. When McKnight Media came along, they basically ticked all the boxes from the introduction meetings. It was important to us that our frontend team wanted to work with them and knew how to speak with them.

Once that team approved it, it was go-time for us and McKnight Media. It proved to be a great decision to get to know the designers and engineers before we started our cooperation.

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve spent around 840 hours working together, and I know that we are charged 300 Croatian Kuna (approximately $50 USD) per hour. We have a set budget for the number of business hours per month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in November 2019, and the partnership is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The whole project started in 2017. There was no real goal that we wanted to achieve as it was basically a wish from our CEO to have a system like that. In late 2019 and early 2020, we formed a product team and started doing the whole product side of the business in order to reach B2B customers to sell the platform to other OEMs. When we noticed that we’d need outside help to push through to deliver something, the scope of the product multiplied by five since January of 2020.

McKnight Media has always been able to deliver everything even though they started with one designer and grew with our needs. We went from a basic product with a few users from our internal team and without any design to a complete product that’s sellable to the B2B space.

We’ve already sold it to a few other OEMs with hundreds of users in early January as well as hundreds of vehicles connected in one year. The design team from McKnight Media was able to support all of our issues from the product side.

How did McKnight Media perform from a project management standpoint?

We don’t have a project manager for our product as we have a product owner in this case. I’m responsible for the whole product and basically ask for the money that will be paid to McKnight Media from other project managers on other projects because we’re formed as a product and the whole product initiative is somewhat new. We’re a project-based company, and we’re now switching to being a product-based company.

The communication is between me as a product representative and the CEO and designer at McKnight Media. It is more official communication such as how many hours have been used, how satisfied we are, and so on. They are in direct communication with our content team in order to get the best possible things from our frontend team.

We really want to achieve great UI/UX designs, but we want that to be possible in the given time and resources. They are in direct contact with the frontend developers in order to achieve that. We have a few calls a week via Microsoft Teams chat and are always on the line.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m most impressed with the feature discovery, and I don’t have a better word for it. We do have a mission and vision from our product side, but due to some time and budget constraints, not every feature is perfectly described and perfectly defined. The connection between my vision from the product side and something that is deliverable and is already on paper or Figma is something that they have been great at.

It has taken as little as possible to deliver as much as possible. That is something that really makes them stand out. It helps that we communicate all the time to basically divert them to the right path even when they go in a slightly different direction than we thought.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We have a huge turnover of developers and new people are constantly coming on board. We all have to be on the same page with our designers. Most of our issues resonated there and communication basically has to be perfect between the designers and the developers. In the last few months, I can really say that communication has been better, and we have polished that to perfection. All the problems that arise are immediately talked about and solved.

We knew that it was a super niche product, and no one has ever done anything close to it in the industry. We knew it would be tough to bring our ideas for the product to life. The amount of work they put in to understand the topic is just unbelievable and it was a huge help. When we started, we had two months' worth of introduction and me telling them what is happening in the vehicle and what is happening in the cloud for them to understand what we are trying to do and build here in order to get the best delivery from their side.

That is something I was blown away by. In the end, it proved to be great. I can rely on everyone from McKnight Media, and I know that they’ll be able to understand everything we’re speaking about even if it is super technical in the automotive field. That was a huge help.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Let them do their work. I was really hesitant to let them off the leash to do what they are best at. They need some freedom to do the work. I see design as art, and they need some freedom to do it. Once I gave them enough freedom and some guidance about what I want to achieve, it just became a great relationship.