Momentum Design Lab

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Like I said, we're still pretty early stage, so we don't have many quantifiable results. We've since hired and built out our own design team, so we haven't worked with them in the past year, but when we were relying on them for a lot of our design work, we were definitely using a lot of what they developed for external pitches and things like that. There's no doubt that they helped us raise money. We raised money from some institutional investors. They probably helped us early on get some customer attention, but quantifying that is pretty tough. Much of what they developed was for external consumption.

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

Momentum was really professional. I liked their approach and the methodology that they used. It was very well organized. One of the things that attracted me to them was their overall professionalism and methods. Sometimes, I'd call them up, and I would need them to put a rush on things, and they would bend over backward to help us.

What distinguishes Momentum Design Lab from other providers?

It was a couple of things. First, we've dealt with a couple different design firms, and Momentum is a very good value. They're very attentive to their clients' needs and to details. There's a personal touch in that they're willing to work with you to surge when you need them to, so it still feels like a small shop even though they've grown into a fairly well-established business. I always felt like we had a lot of personal touch and attention.

Is there anything Momentum Design Lab could have improved or done differently?

It's hard to say. Many weaknesses were probably on our side just because we were early stage and often things were changing quite a bit. They were very adaptive, and I don't really have anything bad to say other than we weren't very mature at that point, so much of what they developed for us eventually was overtaken by other things. I was very pleased. I don't have a bad thing to say about them.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

They have produced five themes for us and about 25 to 30 screens. Turnaround time is good – usually two days average. Weekly, I did not have to engage with them more than two hours to move the project forward. Their leadership is good enough to move things further along. From that perspective, the metric of having to engage with them on a weekly basis is a positive for me.

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

It was great. Whenever a task or milestone was done, I would get an email telling me how many hours we had left. We were always informed on about a weekly basis. At times, when I thought having a meeting wasn't necessary because we knew exactly what we wanted, we just gave it to them, and they took care of it. The project management was receptive, and they were flexible. Usually, I don't see that, but Momentum folks really adjusted at times when we wanted to be mindful of our hourly cost.

What distinguishes Momentum Design Lab from other providers?

They are very responsive in terms of our needs, and they understand it. Their approach is best suited for me because I'm a user experience professional, so I like to do a lot of A/B testing, and I just did not have time to create designs. I gave them a wireframe, they came up with three different concepts and color schemes, and then I took that and tested it with 15 users. It saved me a lot of time, and I got very good feedback.

They use this approach very well, and they insist on this approach because it has served them well. There are other firms I know that will only do visual designs and require much more collaboration and guidance. Momentum initially will burn through the hours very quickly, but it'll be worth it in terms of giving you a lot of options. I think that's a good approach that they use, and then they rotate the designers from project to project, which also keeps the innovation going.

Is there anything Momentum Design Lab could have improved or done differently?

At times, maybe turnaround time for certain designs, but I wouldn't take that as a negative. I understand they were working on different projects and not just our project. There were days when I thought they could come back in two days rather than four, but then you take it with a grain of salt.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We are still implementing the design and devising a schedule to make that happen, so we don't have any deliverables yet.

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

Momentum has a project manager, a principal designer, and also the executive team who joined us initially. The project manager, Henry [Swasey], made sure the meetings were on track and Basecamp was all set up. We would post documents in Basecamp that were related to the functionality or any other research that we had from our customers that would be relevant. We worked iteratively over five or six versions of the design. The designer, Zach, produced InVision mockups which were 20 to 30 screens, and then screen by screen our team of two or three people would review and post specific feedback on Basecamp.

For us, it was pretty iterative because this piece of our product was confusing to customers, and we didn't know what the optimal design was, so we had to experiment with different ideas. We went back and forth to get to a design that we thought was sufficiently rich in capabilities, but also approachable from a user perspective. The project manager was not very involved. He would make sure that the project was on track, we'd get billed, but mostly we worked directly with the designer.

What distinguishes Momentum Design Lab from other providers?

The one thing that was striking was that they were pretty granular in their billing and very fair in the pricing. If they only worked half an hour, we would get for billed half an hour. Momentum was pretty good with staying well within budget and updating us on where we were from a budget perspective.

Is there anything Momentum Design Lab could have improved or done differently?

Not really – nothing came to mind. We'd give them feedback, they'd come back with the updates, and it was that simple. They're half an hour away, and it was relatively easy to schedule a time and have follow-up discussion and get the interaction mockups. That part was all smooth.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

The problem there—and this is going to be a bit unique to us—is that we have not deployed the designs as of yet. There are some internal budget constraints and prioritization we need to take care of. It’s a project that we really want to do. If there’s any stat, it’s that we have 100% internal satisfaction with Momentum.

We had probably 15 key stakeholders involved throughout the process. I was leading the effort to do the redesign with Momentum, and then I ultimately sought approval from all 15–16 of those people, which we obtained. Everyone is very happy with what Momentum did. We have not exposed it to clients just yet, but everyone to whom we do show it understands the intents of the design and they approve of it.

How did Momentum perform from a project management standpoint?

It was pretty slick because they had separated out the project manager, the lead designer, and a contract contact. The project manager facilitated all of the logistics; this person would go to meetings and recordings, and take notes. Then the contract person would facilitate at what point we paid for certain phases of the contract. It was pretty smooth, from a project perspective. We’ve spent most of the time talking to the lead designer, which is what you should be doing in this type of engagement. From a project management perspective, it was pretty clean.

What did you find most impressive about Momentum?

My company takes itself pretty seriously—aside from myself, I should say. Then we went to Momentum and their whole demeanor was a bit casual. To be honest, that was a bit off-putting at first. I did get a little bit of concern from my supervisors about how nonchalant Momentum was. But once we got into a design piece, we totally disregarded that impression and we realized that it was very easy to work with them precisely because they were so casual. I thought this is worth mentioning: They are very easy to work with, but their casualness can be somewhat off-putting.

Beyond that, the designer that they had working on our project at the time was fantastic. She intercepted all of our mumblings with concerns about the current design, and then did something about them in the next iteration. I’m struck by how she really consumed all the feedback that we gave her and got back to us very quickly. I was very impressed with the design itself; it was exactly what we were looking for, and exactly what they showcased on our site—that level of quality.

Are there any areas Momentum could improve?

This has probably changed since then, but the initial contracting piece of it could have been improved. We had to go through several different amendments, and it wasn’t the cleanest thing I’ve ever seen, as far as contracts go. Maybe they would be able to improve in that area. Other than that, I enjoyed the fact that either the managing partner or the CEO stepped in a couple times just to say hi and ask how things were going. They truly wanted to be involved after they handed over the files, so we felt like they were our partner.