Metacarbon

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO of Slash, a neobank for self-employed people. Slash is a YC and NEA backed fintech startup with 10s of thousands of monthly active users, and a team of 22.

For what projects/services did your company hire Metacarbon ?

We hired Metacarbon to own all things design at Slash. We have a shared Slack channel with them and they act as our de facto in house designers. Some of the things they have worked on include:

1. Redesigning our entire app from the ground up.
2. Creating mobile responsive designs for every single screen.
3. Componentizing every single element in our designs, and creating a neat design system.
4. Creating marketing materials for all sorts of launches in very short turnarounds – 3D materials, 2D materials, and more.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We were originally only going to work with Metacarbon to do a simple revamp of our web app and prepare for our 2.0 launch. However, after working with them and seeing how fast and well Metacarbon worked, we decided to work with them over hiring a full time in house designer. The work they produced was much higher quality and the turnaround times were unheard of.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

There's so much to go over here since we've worked with Metacarbon for so long. Every month:

1. Our product managers hop on weekly or bi-weekly calls with the Metacarbon team to go over the things our users are having trouble with and the new projects we want to work on.
2. The Metacarbon team internalizes our feedback, and provides polished, high quality and organized deliverables with multiple options – 100% of the time next day.
3. Metacarbon is also quick to re-prioritize if needed. If we need an urgent marketing task done, we can easily message them and they'll get it done.
4. Metacarbon are also willing to work long hours to make sure deadlines are met.
5. Metacarbon are also willing to provide more resources (more designers) for your business when you are in "crunch" mode and need to get something out quickly.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We've worked with two of their designers very closely – Max and Olya. Max is one of the co-founders of Metacarbon and Olya is a designer at Metacarbon. They were both amazing, had a deep understanding of our product, and moved exceptionally fast.

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

Launched a completely new landing page, mobile app, and the "2.0" version of our product that our users loved.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Extremely effective. We have a dedicated shared Linear workspace where we track tickets. We also have a shared Slack channel where we provide asynchronous feedback to each other. Communication and workflow is spot on.

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

Their speed of execution. It's like nothing we've ever seen before. We've worked with a handful of full time designers, and other agencies. Metacarbon is the most no non-sense group of designers you will come across. They really don't trade off speed for quality, because they usually do both really well.

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

Not really. The only thing that's mildly inconvenient is that they are in a completely different time zone, but we find ways to work around that.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder and CTO of Remi. We’re building a software product for e-commerce companies.

What challenge were you trying to address with Metacarbon?

We were early in our company's journey, so we were looking to quickly prototype a lot of different concepts to get design feedback from potential customers.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Metacarbon helps execute UX/UI design. They design in Figma and incorporate our feedback along the way.

Initially, we met multiple times, and I shared documentation on our user persona and unstructured data for them to organize and use to form a game plan.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with an account manager, a design director, and a UX designer who executes the day-to-day design.

How did you come to work with Metacarbon?

They reached out to us on LinkedIn.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested about $40,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The partnership started in October 2022, and it’s ongoing.

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

They’re among the best designers I’ve worked with. When we give them a task, it’s normally done the next day, and they’re good at solving complicated problems. 

How did Metacarbon perform from a project management standpoint?

They turn around deliverables and incorporate feedback quickly. We have daily check-ins during which they update us on their work, sometimes in video format or with a link to a design file. We share comments during these and also have calls every two weeks for tasks or updates that warrant longer discussions. They provide monthly roadmaps that lay out the remainder of the project.

They manage the project in Linear and use Slack and sometimes Zoom to communicate.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Metacarbon’s speed is a strength.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, we’re happy with them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Outline the project in a consolidated brief with as much information as possible.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Aisopher is a personal philosophical and mental health guide that helps people come out of the existential struggle. We use the conversational interface and AI models to make it happen. I am a Co-Founder and CEO here.

For what projects/services did your company hire Metacarbon?

Metacarbon helped us with the initial product marketing website design, tone of voice setup and the UI/UX for the web product.

How did you select this vendor?

We had been working with one of the Metacarbon founders before.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

The collaboration started from the initial product ecosystem mapping and Metacarbon also asked us to go through some high level plans for years ahead in order to lay out such a scalability into the forthcoming designs of the core functionality and navigation.

We had a few discovery workshops where they guided us through the requirements elicitation exercises and in the end we had the informational architecture of the product and also the MVP scope. After that, we needed to switch to the marketing website, so they started from the marketing wireframes and after some back and forth we had it nailed down.

After that, they iterated a few stylistical options of the UI style for the website and the product. We picked one, had some iterations again and then Max, the design director, started to iteratively cover all the flows, screens and states of the product. In parallel, they had been making everything in a kind of atomic design approach, so in the end we had a components library and design tokens along with the final screens.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Two co-founders. Max, the design director and Roman who covered the product strategy, communication and planning in our case. At some point of time we also had their product designer working along with them and the 3d artist for some marketing website assets.

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

Still in production, but stay tuned for some 2023 Q2 updates!

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

It was smooth and predictable. I really liked that. They are ready to iterate and tweak what they are suggesting if you have some concerns. The timelines were met almost each time and even in those few sprints where they were not, Roman and Max explained the objective reasons behind those delays.

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

They are driving the process, so it’s not about asking questions – getting answers. They are finding the ways to deliver when there are any blockers and really push the design workflow and product ideation together with our product team. Another thing is transparency and feedback loop.

You may visit the Figma file any time, see what happens there, leave the comments and they will collaborate on that straight away. Also, it seems they have really seen a lot of early phase startups, know some typical mistakes and may advise you on this even outside of the UI/UX design spectrum.

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

Maybe bringing on board some motion designers and more illustrators would be a good idea.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the co-founder and owner of an online marketplace startup.

What challenge were you trying to address with Metacarbon?

We needed support with UX/UI and product design.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We gave Metacarbon multiple briefs throughout our partnership. They were very design-centric and asked questions to understand our user personas. They used Figma to design core pages within the marketplace and innovative game controls to enhance the 3D aspect of our experience. Their various UI design prototypes helped us communicate information in easy-to-navigate, engaging, and interesting ways.

What is the team composition?

We were very well-supported by Metacarbon’s team — there was a UX/UI designer, a design director, and a co-founder of the company dedicated to our projects.

How did you come to work with Metacarbon?

Metacarbon reached out to us via email a few times; they had a very compelling pitch, so we hired them. We’d been looking for design support for a while — finding talent that could meet our high standards as a design-driven company had been hard.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $30,000–$40,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with Metacarbon between June–November 2022. Our working relationship is definitely not done; we just don’t have work for them at the moment.

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

Our partners and customers were really impressed with the UX and design of the marketplace and many explicitly said they loved it — we didn’t even solicit this feedback. Much of the positive response can be attributed to Metacarbon’s work. They delivered a polished experience that communicated a strong brand through a well-designed product; it was exactly what we envisioned. 

Even though I don’t have hard data to share, I know from the positive feedback that Metacarbon created really strong designs that worked well; we were very happy with their work.

How did Metacarbon perform from a project management standpoint?

Metacarbon’s communication was great; they were prompt and responsive. They communicated clearly around delivery dates and consistently delivered on those dates — they updated us if they needed more time. They completed everything quickly. They were very professional and flexible.

They were embedded in the team full-time for 3–4 months. They adopted our existing tools and processes, including Slack and Figma. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their versatility and ability to design for a wide range of challenges stood out. They were some of the best designers I’ve worked with — I’ve worked with UX/UI designers at a high level for over 10 years — Metacarbon’s team was really strong. Their design approach and level of quality were always on point. They elevated our product. Working with them was like a dream; I look forward to working with them again.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, nothing stands out for them to improve.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I’d definitely recommend them to others in need of design support.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CEO at a venture backed startup.

For what projects/services did your company hire Metacarbon?

We’re a seed stage startup without any in-house designers. We were in need of a design partner, initially for our branding redesign, and were introduced to Metacarbon via another YCombinator backed startup that had worked with them.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We were referred by a fellow venture backed YCombinator startup.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

We’ve partnered with Metacarbon on several projects so far, spanning our general branding, some custom marketing assets, our primary landing page, and a marketing blog. After being very happy with our partnership, we engaged the team at Metacarbon to help redesign our core product as well.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We've worked with a total of 3 designers and 1 project manager/account owner.

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

Campfire has amazing entrepreneurs and the team of designers they’ve assembled at Metacarbon is stellar. They totally “get” our vision for the brand and the product and are both very creative with fresh ideas and complete work within the parameters that are important to us.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

With Metacarbon, I don’t feel like I’m working with an agency or a consultant. I feel like we have our own amazing in-house design department.

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

I can’t recommend working with Metacarbon enough, especially to other early stage startups.

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

Nothing about the current business comes to mind, but perhaps going forward keeping the talent and service level at the same standard while scaling up.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I work as Head of Commercial for an HR tech company

For what projects/services did your company hire Metacarbon, and what were your goals?

Initially we only wanted their help with marketing deck design but seeing the result of their work, we decided that having a great looking sales materials with outdated website made no sense so we ask them to design a new website for us as well

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We asked our network for recommendations and then reached out to them

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

The only guideline we've given them was to stay close to the design of our core product (in terms of colours) and the logo. As for the rest, we described the 'feel' we'd like to have by looking at the design concept which is extremely vague but we wanted them to lead this project by design without restrictions, which they did amazingly well.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We've had one main point of contact whom we've spoken to nearly daily - as for the rest, I am unsure but happy with how they've managed the project internally.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Outstanding work from start to finish.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Google Spaces (our choice). Other options were offered by them but we use Google internally

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

They took their time to understand what we do and offer as a company and their design reflects that. At no point we had to educate them about what we are trying to achieve.

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

Not really, their work exceeded expecctations

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a B2B regulatory tech SaaS company. We build a SaaS B2B ML product.

What challenge were you trying to address with Metacarbon?

We needed a company that could help us improve the functionality of our MVP product. Our goal was to increase our retention metrics and stickiness around the platform and improve our CX process.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Metacarbon provided us with UX design support to improve the functionality of our MVP SaaS product. They were primarily focused on supporting our feature development efforts, which involved creating new features and working with existing users to understand how we can improve the product and increase our CX and retention metrics. 

This project has now come to a close, but we will be continuing our collaboration as projects materialize.

What is the team composition?

We primarily worked with Olia (Product Designer), but we knew that she engaged the rest of the team at Metacarbon if she needed additional UX insights to support our process.

How did you come to work with Metacarbon?

We found Metacarbon through online research.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $30,000–$40,000 in total.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked on this project from March 2022–June 2022.

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

Metacarbon’s designs have not been fully implemented yet, so we don’t have any metrics available. However, it is very clear that Metacarbon’s contributions have been significant because of their true understanding of our users’ problems.

Not only were they talented in understanding UX from a design and UI perspective, but they also truly understood the UX components and the strategy behind UX. Our chief product officer also explicitly expressed having enjoyed working with them because of the fact that they could have in-depth product conversations and work with them to explore solutions to many of our problems.

How did Metacarbon perform from a project management standpoint?

Metacarbon performed exceptionally well in terms of project management. They were transparent, and they went above and beyond to stay within budget and meet the deadline. 

They were also incredibly flexible when we needed them to be, but they made sure that that flexibility didn’t impact their ability to generate quality work. They clearly have a very savvy process in helping their customers get the best in terms of working with them. 

We coordinated and collaborated through Figma, Notion, and Asana.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Metacarbon’s exceptional project management was key to the success of this engagement. They clearly engaged in best practices around sprint and user testing. We also appreciated their expertise in producing great UI/UX designs.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I have no complaints. We look at them as a long-term solution for us, and we are appreciative every day that we were able to find them. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It’s a great idea to truly be passionate about your product and give room for Metacarbon to be the experts.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the co-founder of Koia, an app to open up access to alternative assets (https://joinkoia.com). We enable anyone to buy fractions of assets such as fine wine, luxury watches and Pokémon Cards starting from just $50.

For what projects/services did your company hire Metacarbon?

Re-design of the mobile app

How did you select Metacarbon?

We searched online, but Metacarbon reached out on LinkedIn and we selected them based on their strong portfolio

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

Team clearly walked us through all the steps of the process and timelines. We then started with audit of the existing apps and suggestions for improvements in terms of UX / UI. Then started the re-designs which was an iterative process where we chatted every day for feedback. The last phase was putting together an extensive style guide and UI kit for developers to use and for internal designers to build on

How many resources from the Metacarbon team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Mostly with their product designer

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

They've finished the project in time, and we're happy with the results, and the deliverables have come in as expected New app screen designs + extensive UI kit.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Very good communication on Slack and Google Meet, we didn't encounter any issues.

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

Good client relationship management and communication; we're very happy with the final designs and the team just has a great eye for design. It was also nice that the team members had an interest in and some experience either professionally or just as users with investment and trading apps as it helped build a better product.

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

Nothing in particular

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and founder of a startup. We’re a team of 15 people located across the world, but our company is based in Germany. We’re currently building a headless content management platform.

What challenge were you trying to address with Metacarbon?

We started out as an agency and then we wanted to develop the product that we’re working on right now. As a result, we hired Metacarbon to build our design system and UI since our in-house UI/UX designers are focused on our agency projects.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We already have 2,000 customers for our B2B product and our product's version two will have Metacarbon’s design. From creating our wireframes on Figma, their head of design is now finishing the second version of our product's design.

What is the team composition?

We work with Max (Founding Partner & Head of Design) who is their art director and Ivan (Product Designer) who is our regular designer.

How did you come to work with Metacarbon?

We felt pretty lucky that Metacarbon approached us on LinkedIn. We saw that they were a good fit for us so we worked with them.

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve spent $43,200, and we spend $7,200 a month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in June 2021, and it’s ongoing. They have been working on this project for about six months, and we have no end date for this project yet.

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

From what I see, Metacarbon’s work is top-notch and everything's on point. Max is very talented, and he easily understood the concept of what we’re doing.

How did Metacarbon perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management process has been perfect, and they’ve met all of our deadlines. We use Slack and phone calls to communicate.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Max understands our product and is capable of executing what we need. He’s a skilled guy, which allows him to quickly turn over our required outputs.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Max did the major part of the wireframing efforts, and Ivan also caught up pretty quickly and is doing a great job in assisting Max. Ivan is a really good designer, but not as skilled as Max. However, that’s only because Ivan is not the art director. Despite that, everything’s fine and I don’t think they can improve anything.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

We told Metacarbon what we needed, and they’ve guided us through everything. We’ve also worked with a lot of other freelancers, but our experience with Metacarbon has been exceptional. If you have the opportunity to hire them, that’ll be perfect.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am CTO & Lead Software Engineer @ Zen Walk. ZenWalk is a product company on a mission to engage low-active people into physical activities while making fitness walking more meaningful.

For what projects/services did your company hire Metacarbon, and what were your goals?

Metacarbon team helped us with MVP scoping, figuring out some major product strategy streams to focus on and then delivered the UI/UX design for the mobile app, along with the progressive design system we are currently using with our in-house team. Primary goal was to move from white paper stage to the clickable prototype. We needed to pack all the ideas and added value functionality into a laconic and intuitive product experience.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We had been working with the co-founders even before they launched Metacarbon, so when we needed the product design team again they were the obvious go-to destination for us.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

ZenWalk gamifies your walking activities and therefore brings you everyday motivation to go for a fitness walk. At the very beginning we had well-prepared gamification scenarios, motivation system, achievements system, ideas on meditation functionality and much more, but haven’t had a clear vision on how we could pack it all together into the natural mobile experience.

Metacarbon proposed to start with the discovery phase which included the user interviews, product architecture workshop, user flows design and then the navigation wireframing to settle up some core UX framework. Afterwards, the guys have covered the wireframes for the whole product.

We had a bunch of iterations there until we found the right solutions for all the details and the guys were pretty responsive and open-minded even despite a lot of comments and high-level suggestions from us. Then, we had the UI concept stage where Max (the Design Director) suggested a few different stylistic options to pick from.

One week was spent on tweaking the option we liked most and then we had the user testing session with 5 people they managed to invite. Once the UI concept was finalized and tweaked after the user interviews, we jumped into covering all the screens and flows with the final design based on the wireframes and the UI concept.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We had been working directly with Max, one of the co-founders of Metacarbon and one more product designer.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The main outcome we have is the progress from the concept white paper stage to the launched MVP product. Most of the users really adore the user interface of the app, so we are pretty sure we did a great job at picking the right design vendor.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Very good. The roadmap timeline was updated several times due to the additional complexity we faced, but that is the normal thing. The team is really responsive and agile and it looks like everyone really loves what they do. That is the perfect setup for a good quality.

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

The team is very proficient in structuring a lot of very raw information and building up some workable system to work with. It is crucially helpful at the early stages and we found it as a good bonus and additional value to the typical UI/UX services most companies offer.

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

Would be great if we could have on-site cooperation with them within the discovery phase, but Covid made it impossible.