Momentum Design Lab

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

It’s a little early still, but they’ve greatly benefitted our businesses. The product designs are still being implemented, but the internal feedback on the prototype has been very positive. In terms of the new product, early reactions to their deliverables from both customers and the internal team have been incredibly positive.

How did Momentum Design Lab perform from a project management standpoint?

I couldn’t have asked for a better project manager. They were so on top of tasks, making sure everything was going according to schedule. The team was super organized. We had daily standups and weekly in-depth meetings with them. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were very flexible in incorporating what we wanted into the project. For instance, we didn’t want to put personas at the forefront of our work. Instead, we wanted to focus on the jobs to be done with the product. They were quick with researching this change in execution, capturing it in the final deliverable using the language we wanted.

Overall, the effort was very collaborative. We worked in partnership with their very creative team to push our concepts to the next level. Our team gained a lot more from the partnership than expected. They were instrumental in the new product vision, clearly understanding our business and value add, translating them into strong product design.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Not really, I was happy with their services.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Engage with them as if they were an extension of your team. That allows for your relationship to build.

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

It was critically important for our product to have a good user interface that is accessible and easy to navigate. Momentum Design Lab largely accomplished those goals and did a really nice job. It’s an excellent design. Despite the complexities of our product, they were able to manage all of the challenges and came up with an elegant, good-looking interface. 

Having said that, the project took substantially longer and cost far more money than they initially quoted. It wasn’t even close. After the first phase, they ran out of budget, and the designs weren’t even a third of the way finished.

How did Momentum Design Lab perform from a project management standpoint?

They struggled on project management. Kevin and Fernando are good designers and did a great job with the actual output. They were communicative and gathered a lot of feedback as we went through the process, often interacting several times a week.

However, the initial quotes weren’t anywhere close to the final cost and timeline, and the project just wasn’t well-tracked. We expected the final delivery at a certain date, but when we got within a week or two from the deadline, they told us that they would need more time.

Since we needed the UI done, we agreed to do a second statement of work with a new budget and timeframe, but they even ran out of that. We winded up doing a third statement of work, which was pretty complicated, so there might have been some scope creep. But the initial statement of work was woefully too small.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The actual quality of work is really good. They took a lot of complicated pieces in our software and integrated it into a professional, well-organized, and easy-to-navigate design. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Momentum Design Lab should have had a more realistic timeline and budget at the onset. This wasn’t a scope creep situation; rather, they knew what was needed, but the initial estimates were way off.

Part of the issue was that they burned up a lot of the first budget focusing on user mapping and general research. Although I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to do, I could see how this was important. It would help them understand what they needed to do and what the user setting was. But they didn’t have enough budget left over to actually execute on the designs.

Ultimately, by the third statement of work, Fernando went into a long period of doing most of the wireframing.

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

In the end, we didn’t achieve what we set out to in the beginning. We didn’t fully grasp the scope, so we knew that we couldn’t finish the project during one $54,000 contract, to which we are limited at one time. If we want to continue through multiple phases of the project to completion, we have to go back for more money, but we opted not to.

We took the work that they delivered, and my team is now making good progress internally. They gave us a running start, but we didn’t contract it to completion.

How did Momentum Design Lab perform from a project management standpoint?

We had some gaps as it took us a little while to realize where the challenges lie. We rushed through the early phase when we should have gone deeper­—we didn’t do any user flows and maps. The main reason is we weren’t quite ready, but they started throwing us design layouts and compositions of finished websites.

We had to backtrack because they weren’t heading in the right direction, so we revectored the project to focus on the components and underlying infrastructure of a design system. That went well, and they were able to hand off those components to give us a running start.

They were very understanding and not defensive while we figured out that we needed to do something a little differently. They understood, listened, and worked with us to correct the course. We had daily communication.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I really like the designs’ creativity and thoroughness. I was also impressed with the way they presented their ideas and would happily work with them again.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The overall scope of deliverables was loosely defined for each phase, which was way too rushed for us. It was run as a team meeting every single day, and we just couldn’t consume what they were doing with enough time to understand it, get some stakeholder input on it, and provide feedback. All of that was driven by the fact we had a set amount of budget, and they dedicated two designers to the project and a project manager who was basically full-time. It meant we were going to consume the budget in two to three weeks, which wasn’t nearly enough. We needed to spread it out over two to three months.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Define the scope clearly upfront and budget the whole project then. We didn’t get good value, but it doesn’t mean other people wouldn’t. Their overall pricing structure is very competitive, and the value that we did receive was good.