Momentum Design Lab

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I was also the co-founder and CEO of another company called Yola.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Momentum?

That company’s website and app needed a UX overhaul.  

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

First, Momentum evaluated what we had built already and brought some best practices around the redesign. We had a tight timeline so it couldn’t be a full overhaul, just partial. To get it fixed, we needed to be smart about what we spent time and energy on. It was very collaborative. We explained what we needed and they came up with good suggestions on how to implement and how to make it work.

How did you come to work with Momentum?

It was a while ago so I don’t remember the details.

How much have you invested with Momentum?

We spent $10,000 to $50,000 for that project.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project was finished 4 or 5 years ago.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Momentum was able to get the project out in time. The feedback we got was great. We saw some very positive metric improvements in conversion rates and usage of the tool. It was a huge improvement over the old site.

How did Momentum perform from a project management standpoint?

I had a project manager working with them directly. I wasn’t personally involved.

What did you find most impressive about Momentum?

The team was fantastic and the lead designer was great. They were able to execute what we wanted. It was a very good engagement and we had no problems.

Are there any areas Momentum could improve?

None.

BACKGROUND

Please introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for Verifone, a terminal manufacturer. We are a market leader in point of sales terminals and product terminals used in the retail environment. We also have a payment processing and securities business. I am the director of product management for merchants and the director of partner experience for new commerce platform products.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Momentum Design Lab?

Our commerce platform is the new way of opening up the payment ecosystem. We provide applications for our banking partners so that they can offer better service to their merchants. We are coming up with a new, publicly announced product called Verifone Carbon, hardware with an ecosystem component where third party developers – individual as well as enterprise developers – can publish their applications through our marketplace. Those applications will be available to the Verifone commerce marketplace merchants.

The value proposition we are trying to solve is to design an experience for the merchants so that they can use our products effectively. It's an Android-based system with a web interface as well. We engaged with Momentum to help design the new merchant experience. When merchants get the device, we need to show them how to use it and how to manage day-to-day operations like employee management, transaction management, receipts, and so forth.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Momentum was engaged to help design the merchant experience for the device. We extended that engagement to design the web interfaces for our partners, developers and the app market space. Specifically, they helped us in creating the information architecture. We had several brainstorming sessions to create the information architecture documents. Then, we had sessions where we focused on what the vision was – how our vision translates into the drive experience as well as the online experience for merchants, developers, and bank partners. They helped us create the high volatility wireframe mockups and final design specs that our developers could implement.

How did you come to work with Momentum Design Lab?

When we were seeking quotes and proposals from various design agencies, Momentum came in as a personal reference, so we had that initial introduction.

One important factor in selecting Momentum Design was their proximity. We are based out of San Jose, California, and they are based out of San Mateo. They could drive down to working sessions on short notice compared to some of the other agencies that were farther away, making it difficult to manage design sessions that are more about sharing ideas and being agile remotely. That was certainly one consideration.

The other thing was obviously their proposed deliverables. The proposal that we received was clear and laid out what their discovery process was going to be. What I liked particularly was how they were going to go about developing what we were looking for and then providing the code.

Last, but not least, was the price for the code. We were in a very tight budget situation with a specific budget already approved for all this work. Our selecting Momentum was a combination of all these things.

How much have you invested with Momentum Design Lab?

It was well in excess of $200,000 – it was a large project lasting six months. We started with two designers and the project manager. We provided the strategic guidance. We expanded to two additional designers, two interaction designers, one information architect, and one project manager.

What is the status of this engagement?

The whole timeline was about six to eight months, in the October or November to May or June timeframe.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They are on top of the work and are still available for questions. They are good at communicating what they need. The information architecture architect was good. Through the discovery process, we uncovered a lot of information. That information drove the whole discussion in a very meaningful way. They kept the projects under budget and stayed within the timeline.

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

They helped create the initial project and would keep on top of the deliverables using tools like Basecamp or Slack. They communicate and collaborate in an agile manner. We used to have a weekly budget call to make sure the work was going appropriately. As with any vendor or contract position, there is obviously a need to pay attention to budgets and timelines.

I was happy with their project management. Every engagement is different and every organization is different. Obviously, we had to adjust a little bit to their working style, but we managed to do that.

What did you find most impressive about Momentum Design Lab?

What distinguishes them is their availability. Their senior executives and staff were available all the time to answer questions. If there were any questions on the budget, extensions on the project or technical questions, they'd be there.

I would highlight the discovery process and the delivery of the information architecture. We are able to build on that because that document fulfills the vision that we had. We can now secure that vision.

Are there any areas Momentum Design Lab could improve?

Obviously, nobody's perfect, and there's always room for improvement. There was a little bit of a problem on the team when another designer had to go on a personal leave. That caused friction because we were working under tight timelines.

The other thing was when our senior designer left, we had to ramp down and then ramp up again. Other problems were obviously the function of people and timelines. We could have spent a little bit more time in exploring different design options. But, obviously, we had to start somewhere.

BACKGROUND

Please introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a startup in the financial technology space. We have an application that is aimed at making international money transfers extremely fast and simple. We've been working on this out of China for a couple of years now. I am the chief executive officer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Momentum Design Lab?

We essentially needed a backend engineer. We had an employee leave, and so we were shorthanded in that respect. I had talked to Momentum previously for UI/UX [user interface/user experience]. I reached out to them and asked if they had expertise doing what we needed on the back-end. They said they could help us, so we retained them.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They helped us create and develop some of the back-end features – server side development, development operations – things like that. We have a back-end API [application programming interface] that serves our mobile application, and that's the piece where we needed help. Their work wasn't really client facing, but it's obviously an integral part of our services.

How did you come to work with Momentum Design Lab?

I heard good things about them through a mutual professional relationship. We had explored retaining them earlier for some UI/UX work, but had ultimately decided not to go that direction. We had good conversations during those talks and, when I needed someone, I reached out to them. Based on word of mouth and reputation, I felt comfortable giving Momentum a try.

How much have you invested with Momentum Design Lab?

It's right around $50,000 give or take, but it might be a little more than that.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our relationship was more of a collaborative experience that didn't have a real start and end date. They jumped in, plugged some holes for us and had a guy who could help push us ahead a little bit quicker and in areas where we necessarily didn't have the needed expertise.

In time, we also were able to hire another in-house person, and so as we ramped up, we could wind down our relationship with Momentum. It faded out more than came to a hard stop at any particular milestone. All that was about a year ago, and I think the actual engagement lasted three or four months.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I was generally satisfied with what they did. I think they were effective and efficient, which is important given that their rates are not at all cheap. I think in time – and this is not necessarily their fault – we had to make some changes to what they did. What they provided us wasn't the most well-architected solution, but it got us to where we needed to go at that time. Overall, I'm generally satisfied.

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

They were very good and very clear on what they were doing. They had a dedicated project manager who I think ended up not being all that necessary because I worked more directly with the programmer. The programmer himself was very good at project management. He let me know what he had worked on, what he was planning to work on and provided accurate estimates as to how long each piece would take.

What did you find most impressive about Momentum Design Lab?

From my point of view, they're very professional. I think, as a consulting firm, they're very well managed. I felt comfortable that if I retained them, I'd get what I'd bargained for. This is in contrast to many consulting firms that are often programmers without much management or organizational experience.

From a client's point of view, the ability to budget and have the outcome fall in line with expectations is quite important because it helps immensely with our ability to plan. I think that their ability to manage and organize a project accurately is something that sets them apart.

Are there any areas Momentum Design Lab could improve?

While their technical expertise was good, it wasn't necessarily top of the line. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I spotted a few things in his technical implementation that could've been better.

BACKGROUND

Please introduce your business and what you do there.

Our company is called Llamasoft, and we specialize in supply chain software. My title is senior vice president of software development.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Momentum Design Lab?

We are in the process of building the next generation of our flagship product, which is a desktop supply chain modeling tool that's been in the market for more than 10 years. Slightly more than a year ago, we began an effort to do a ground up development of a brand new interface with a lot of new functionality to replace the existing flagship product, which had evolved from an initial code base during the better part of a decade.

Instead of continuing that evolution, we wanted to take advantage of the new technologies, the new underlying off-the-shelf software. Most importantly, we wanted to design a much richer, more compelling interface that we knew would be impossible given the constraints of the existing technology.

We started from the ground up and struggled with our limited in-house user interface design capabilities. Our team had developed an initial offering, something a bit more than just a prototype but the beginnings of a working, new, functional application. Unfortunately, none of us were satisfied with the overall look and feel of the workflow.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

I first engaged with Momentum on the workflow of that particular product. We narrowed the involvement down to the main left-hand navigation, top-level navigation and three or four different primary workflows, mostly centered on data manipulation. The application is very data-manipulation heavy – bringing data in, getting it ready, putting it into the model, and configuring it – there's a fair amount of configuration associated with the model building process, which ultimately then gets represented into a mathematical optimizer.

Momentum needed to understand that data, get it prepared for the optimization and then visualize the data after the fact. We didn't do a complete soup-to-nuts user experience workflow design for the entire application, which would have required a deep understanding of supply chain design in order to do that successfully. We focused more on the style, on how we wanted to present certain screens and options, including the look and feel, the color palette, and the icon design.

How did you come to work with Momentum Design Lab?

We had a full-time UI [user interface] person for the better part of a year leading up to this initiative, but this person just wasn't able to create what we thought was a compelling new design look and feel. We had a few outside consultants provide some ideas and inputs, but we didn't go very far with that. Finally, we went on a more comprehensive search with a specified budget of $75,000 to $100,000.

During the past year or so, we had been reaching out to individual contractors and design firms, but just couldn't find anybody that brought strong capabilities to user interface design. We kept searching and finally came across Momentum. We had interviewed three or four different firms and short-listed Momentum. The process wasn't extraordinarily formal. We gave them some existing screens and workflows and asked them to come back with their designs to show us in a relatively small scope how they would handle a couple of pages and the workflow associated with the application. We just liked Momentum's work, and so we chose them.

How much have you invested with Momentum Design Lab?

So far, we've spent about $175,000 working with them – with good potential that we'll do more.

What is the status of this engagement?

The flagship project was successfully completed and the results were good – all the way up to our CEO, who is not easy to please, but who was very happy with the overall look and feel of what Momentum had produced.

We have another product that is not specific to supply chain design but is an ETL [extract, transform, load] data manipulation tool that people use to help prepare the data for modeling. We wanted Momentum to bring that user interface in line with the new interface of our flagship product so that when we release this new product in 2017, the data manipulation tool, which is often used in conjunction with it, will have a similar look and feel.

We just finished that engagement, and it capped at $75,000. We will likely engage Momentum again for a third product, which is a web-based product associated with a company that we purchased at the beginning of this year. I'm in talks with our main contact at Momentum. We may or may not do that project. If we don't, it's not because of them, it's because we don't want to spend that money right now.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Momentum helped significantly with the overall look and feel of the application. Many of our users are going to be very interested in how to build these models and what the setup is for them, but Momentum didn't focus on those issues. Instead, they focused more on the aesthetics and the application interaction.

They worked on how menus are controlled and on how many things should be put on a particular menu. They looked at all of the configuration options that would appear on the left-hand navigation, how fly-outs are controlled, and how our detailed master is organized. They weren't responsible for the actual setting up of the model and the nuts and bolts of how to build a model, although that's of course a big part of what the users care about.

The application is not going to come out until 2017, but we do have a dozen or more advisory council customers, and we have shipped an early version to a couple of them. We had our annual conference in June [2016], and the feedback on the look and feel of the application has been very positive.

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

They executed the project very well. The owner wasn't engaged on a day-to-day basis, but he stayed engaged enough so that we felt we weren't just sold and then left alone. We had one main designer who was working with our team. Once the initial understanding was put together and the teams got to know each other and how people worked, the project settled into a comfortable weekly rhythm.

We had meetings every week during which we would lay out what we wanted from Momentum for the next week. They would talk back and forth about that and come to an understanding of how our customers would use what we wanted, what the purpose was – they would just get a good feel for the requirement. They then would typically go off for about a week and work on that. They worked with an online tool that allowed them to build prototypes that are relatively interactive but not hooked up to the database – there's no code behind it. It provides a good idea as to what something is going to look like which, in turn, is what they would give to the developers.

We had our UI person on their team who was their main contact throughout the week for any follow-ups or questions they might have. Then we'd meet the following week. Momentum would show us what they did, and our team would provide feedback, perhaps suggesting some changes or modifications, then we would talk about what we wanted Momentum to do the next week. That cycle continued from start to finish.

What did you find most impressive about Momentum Design Lab?

Their project management was good. They did have a separate project manager as well who kept things on track. There was good transparency into the money, how it was being spent, and where we were along the way. That part was all good.

Ultimately, what distinguishes Momentum from others we've worked with is that they put together nice designs. We've had a lot of in-house attempts to execute designs for multiple products, and although what we did was OK, nobody got excited. That also holds true for external consultants we've used.

I would say that for the first time in the two-plus years that I've been here, the designs that Momentum put together got people, even our CEO, excited, even to the point where people said our other products should look like this. That's where the second engagement came from. We wanted to keep the identity of those other products but, in some way, be compatible with the look and feel of our flagship product.

Are there any areas Momentum Design Lab could improve?

If I were to give a reference for them, I wouldn't point out any red flags or anything someone would have to worry about. I think they're a little bit on the high side as far as price is concerned, but you get what you pay for. In the end, it's money well spent if you get a good design. I don't think in any way they're overpriced for the quality of the service they provide.

I don't really have any criticism. People can always improve in terms of communication, execution, and speed, but we never got complaints from anyone that we're going too slow or we're not getting what we asked for. I definitely give them high marks overall.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We're a very large organization, and one part of our business operates a web-enabled benchmarking platform. I'm responsible for that platform.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Momentum Design Lab?

The platform was built by very analytical people, and it wasn't particularly user-friendly. We needed help to improve the user experience of clients who were using the tool.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Momentum was involved in a consultative standpoint as opposed to a build standpoint. First, they evaluated our existing platform. They then developed mockups and wireframes for potential new releases. Afterward, they worked with us to finalize the new release. Momentum also worked with our development teams to make sure that the project fit the overall design objectives.

How did you come to work with Momentum Design Lab?

I started scouting around to see who could help us, and they were the best. It was competitive, and we did not issue an RFP [request for proposal]. We were evaluating both internal and external options.

How much have you invested with Momentum Design Lab?

We have invested $50,000 to $200,000 with Momentum.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started in August of last year [2015] and wrapped around December or January. I haven't had the need to use them for support since then.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our clients went from hating the tool to liking it. I have stats on that, but the feedback from our customers has been a 180-degree change.

How did Momentum perform from a project management standpoint?

I think Momentum performed well in terms of project management. I don't know that it was project management as much because it was more "get in, get it done, get out." We are a complex organization, with people from different groups and locations. There was certainly a cascade of folks, and there were different people responsible for the business and technology side. But, the number of stakeholders on our side was more complicated than that. Momentum needed to transition from working with a set of business folks to a set of technology folks on our side. I think Momentum did an excellent job of getting everything done, especially since we gave them a short timeframe.

What did you find most impressive about Momentum Design Lab?

We couldn't have done what we did without Momentum's involvement. Our interaction has radically changed how I view future development efforts. We had a very obvious blind spot around user experience that they were able to address. Moving forward, user experience is going to be the first thing to be considered, not after the fact. I have recommended Momentum internally to our other groups and would absolutely use them again if we had another project like that.

Are there any areas Momentum Design Lab could improve?

No – not within the scope of what we did. Momentum did exactly what we asked them to do and hit it out of the park.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a full-service digital marketing agency. I am one of four partners in the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Momentum Design Lab?

We are mainly a marketing agency, and we had a few clients who had needs that were higher than what we could have provided at the time. Even though we had some UI [user interface] experience, we looked for a partnership with an agency that had UI/UX [user experience] expertise in the enterprise field. We naturally thought of Momentum as we've been working with them for a number of years already.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We let Momentum take on some of our larger projects from beginning to end, especially if the work is outside our area of expertise. These are mainly UI/UX projects, particularly in the enterprise software field. Momentum handled the initial scoping, project management, resourcing, wireframing, and prototyping. They took care of all the needs of our clients as well as any needs from our side. Momentum also did user research, interface pattern recognition and UI testing. We've never done UI testing, and Momentum has a lot of experience in that field, as well as UI software comparisons. We worked on a project in the HTML field, and they were able to do a lot of the research about how people use HTML.

How did you come to work with Momentum Design Lab?

I've known David [Thomson], the founder of Momentum, for almost 20 years. We started our companies at about the same time, so we've always kept in touch. I admire his work ethic and the depth of his company. We've always tried to find opportunities to work together. When we bring David on to a project, we know that it's going to be done right the very first time. There has been very little handholding, if at all, for any of the projects that we've worked together.

How much have you invested with Momentum Design Lab?

We have invested $1 million in our engagement with Momentum.

What is the status of this engagement?

In the past decade, we've worked with Momentum on more than a dozen projects. Some are short term, lasting for a few weeks or months while others have been multiyear projects. Currently, we have one project that's been going on for a year and a half. There's always at least one or two projects going on at any one time that we're working together.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The real evidence of Momentum's impact is the fact that our clients keep coming back month after month, year after year. One client has spent more than a million dollars with us, and we started another project with Momentum the last couple of weeks or so. All the clients that involved Momentum have been very happy with the results.

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

Momentum's project management has been very seamless. Momentum uses an agile project management system, and they have a great scrum master. In fact, since working with them, we've adopted many of their processes. Even though we are mainly a digital marketing agency, their way of processing projects is something quite extraordinary. They are able to do a lot of work without layers of project management. Since they work so closely with engineers, their project management style matches the engineers' project management style.

What did you find most impressive about Momentum Design Lab?

Momentum is truly a world-class agency in terms of results and project management. Many companies claim they can do enterprise level of UI/UX, and they really can't. Momentum's understanding of the enterprise software field is second to none. My company is made up of around 40 people, and we know many of Momentum's designers and project managers. We admire the overall structure of the company. We've learned a lot from this relationship, and it has improved how we work internally.

Are there any areas Momentum Design Lab could improve?

Momentum is a world-class company, and they have a regimented system that works very well. There are very few people that work at that level. We could send them more work, but I think they like being a smaller agency. Even though they have been able to expand for some of our projects, we are probably three times larger than they are. I think there's a bottleneck on where they are now and how many people they could apply to a project. Momentum is trying to build up capacity, but building up capacity in the Bay area is challenging.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

ChangeTip facilitates social media-based payments using Bitcoin and United States dollars in exchange for content that you love. You can buy your favorite YouTube artist a beer or a coffee through the comments, and then we handle the transaction.

What is your position?

I was the CEO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Momentum Design Lab?

Before we brought Momentum on, we had a fairly ugly site, and we needed to reduce the complexity. Momentum came in and thought through the process from the user’s perspective, created a set of wireframes for us and produced a template for us that made the site look much more aesthetically appealing and professional.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

They helped us at first with user archetyping, understanding what a typical user should want to experience. Then, we went on create information architecture diagrams. Then, they produced wireframes, a template, and a style guide and those were the final products.

How did you come to work with Momentum Design Lab?

I had worked with Dave [Thomson, Momentum Design Lab's CEO] at a previous company, so this was the third company that we’ve done work at together. I knew him from before he started Momentum.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

It was between $10,000 and $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them from February 2014 through May 2014. We were just done with their services. We ended up taking on design resources in house.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Based on the template that they gave us, we relaunched the site. Conversions went up. Based on what they did, the user experience was improved. Users proclaimed that the site was much better.

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

I give them an A-plus. They did everything they should. They managed requirements well. They delivered on time and with no complaints. We had an assigned project manager, and we met about once a week digitally using Google Hangouts.

What distinguishes Momentum Design Lab from other providers?

Momentum is exceptional in the breadth of their knowledge, the quality of their talent, and their ability to reduce very complex problems into simple user interfaces.

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

No. Truly, they did everything very well.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

I worked with Momentum when I worked with Attensity, which was a text analytics product. The technology was bought by another company in February 2016, so Attensity doesn't exist anymore.

What is your position?

I was the senior director of business operations.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Momentum Design Lab?

About two years ago, Attensity was planning to launch a new product in the market, and we had to bring this product to market very quickly. Rather than hiring UI [user interface] designers and developers, we wanted to have an extension to our team. We had some front-end engineers, but we wanted to augment the existing team, so we used Momentum for that.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

They provided us with a contractor who supported our team and helped with development of our product.

How did you come to work with Momentum Design Lab?

They had done some work with my company in the past. That was a while back. Then, when we had this need, we reached back out to them.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

It cost from $50,000 to $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

It started about two years ago and lasted about a year. The majority of the work took place in 2014.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

No, not directly, but it was helpful to have the resources that Momentum provided to take our product to market on time. We had a relatively short timeline of nine months. It was good to have the Momentum resource on our team so we could scale more hours without having to worry about hiring somebody. They were a very good quality resource.

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

They did extremely well. There wasn't much project management required because we just needed one person as an extra addition to our team, but they were very responsive to whatever we needed. They very quickly gave us people and rates, and they worked with our budget – those kinds of things. They didn't need to do a whole lot of day-to-day project management but, once the resource joined our team, he was like an internal resource for us.

What distinguishes Momentum Design Lab from other providers?

Momentum was very responsive, very interested in helping us succeed, and possessed high-quality resources.

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

No, not really. We didn't do more business with them because of what happened, but that's not a reflection of Momentum's quality. It's more of a reflection of where my company was because the plan was to do much more.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

My company is a software development company. We produce software products for the insurance industry that we sell and license to insurance carriers.

What is your position?

My position is manager of the user experience design team.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Momentum Design Lab?

On the initial project, we were actually doing a visual redesign of our core product, so it was a pretty big project. At the time, our UX design team was very small and didn't really have sufficient visual design expertise, so we needed to supplement our team.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We've actually engaged Momentum in three different projects, so I'll talk through those. The first project was the one I just described, which was the visual design project. They were essentially creating a larger theme for our core products. They did quite a number of iterations on visual themes for my company to review and eventually incorporate into our product.

The second project involved getting some resources to develop the UI [user interface] work that they had done. The third time we engaged them was on a different project where we needed a few icons designed. It was a relatively small project where we needed seven icons.

How did you come to work with Momentum Design Lab?

I don't remember how we got in touch with them – it was five years ago [2011]. I had talked to several different UX consulting firms and chose them over the others.

How much have you invested with Momentum Design Lab?

The first project was less than $100,000. The second one was probably about that size, too. The third one was about a $15,000 project. It wasn't that big. Our total spend was probably right around $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The first project was about five years ago, the second one was about four years ago, and the third one was earlier this year. I don't have an active engagement with them at the moment.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I don't have statistics, but I can tell you that Momentum satisfied our needs in those first two projects so that I thought to call them back on that third one. They completed the work that we needed on time with good quality. They were certainly competent and very good in terms of meeting deadlines and organization of work. We use Basecamp to communicate, and they're very good about posting things there and keeping us informed about what's going on.

We had a lot of positive feedback on their design work. Internally, the last set of icons was for a couple of internal development tools, and the team is quite happy with the designs. They're using them now.

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

The first and third projects went very well. Again, they kept us informed. The second one that involved development resources wasn't as smooth as the others, and I want to make sure to mention this. The developers who were working on it didn't seem as well integrated with our team. At that point, we needed people who had UI development expertise to help us through some humps because we were developing our own expertise in-house, and it wasn't as smooth as it could've been. They weren't as communicative. It wasn't bad, but it didn't go as smoothly as in the other projects.

What did you find most impressive about Momentum Design Lab?

They are easy to communicate with. I never felt like I was passed around. In some companies, you're talking to one person, and then you have to talk to somebody else to get something done. Then, that person can't make decisions, and so you're going back to somebody else. I didn't get that sense here. I was dealing with one person and that person was my contact, and they had the ability to make decisions or at least get back to me quickly. I liked that – the personal relationship aspect.

Are there any areas Momentum Design Lab could improve?

I did mention the responsiveness problem in the second project. Other than that, no, I thought they did well. I thought they had the right people on the job. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

My company is NTT i3. We provide a global network. My group is working on an SDN [software defined network] solution.

What is your position?

I am the senior UX [user experience] designer. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Momentum Design Lab?

In this company, I do both UI [user interface] development and UX design. I have to work more on the developing side, so I need more help on the UX side. 

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

First, they started consulting our project status. One thing I really liked was that they are very practical. They tried to accommodate our project goals, status, and schedule. They tried to fit our project status, and then did the wireframing and mockups for the design. Then, we discussed our goals and then finally we agreed on their proposal for the wireframe and started the visual design. They provided the HTML code for our project.

How did you come to work with Momentum Design Lab?

Joe [Preston], who worked for Momentum Design Lab at the time, organized an enterprise UX meet up in the Bay Area. That's where I got to know Momentum Design Lab. They understand enterprise customer issues, and they're knowledge is very fitting to our solution.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

The project budget was around $120,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started in September 2015, and it ended in December.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

Our product is not yet for ready for market. Our company is the center of the NTT group. We provide our product to other NTT-owned companies. We don't have any kind of statistics or metrics but, because of the work Momentum has done, we developed a great reputation from our parent companies. I appreciate their work in that regard.

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

They are very flexible. They do agile-style design. I changed the project a couple of times, but they followed the changes with ease. They try to stick to the project status and goal. They are very flexible.

What distinguishes Momentum Design Lab from other providers?

I have worked with other design agencies for other projects. Momentum knows a lot about enterprise industries and about what's popular in the enterprise market. It is easy to talk with them about our product because they know what's happening in the enterprise market. Other agencies are good for the consumer market, but they don't have much knowledge about the enterprise market.

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

No. I'm very happy as far as their work. They are still a small agency, so if they had more people, they could have finished the project faster. They could expand their company to do more, but that would be it.