Old.St Labs

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Managing Partner of Mariana UFP LLP

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Financial services brokerage and asset management

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Old.St Labs to accomplish?

• Create market abuse monitoring tool
• Create communications monitoring tool

SOLUTION

How did you find Old.St Labs?

• Referral
• Personal acquaintances

Why did you select Old.St Labs over others?

• Close to my geographic location
• Pricing fits our budget
• Good value for cost
• Proactive attitude

How many teammates from Old.St Labs were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

• Create a bespoke tool for monitoring trade data. 
• Analyse vs market data for suspicious activity. 
• Create monitoring rules and allow for calibration and updates. 
• Workflow management for escalation and review. 
• Secondary project to monitor communications (instant messenger, email, phone). 
• Keyword alerts, workflow management

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Delivered tool that is in use today

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

Regular calls with whole team as well as ad hoc meetings where required. Modules delivered on time,- initially working together to design the tool, once full scope agreed, targets hit and management kept fully updated. Changes in targets were incorporated without fuss

What was your primary form of communication with Old.St Labs?

Virtual Meeting

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

Management team worked closely with Mariana to design product. Genuine input and understanding of what it was we were looking for, rather than simply building an off the shelf product or reacting solely to our requests. The team implemented changes based on our specific needs. When necessary Old St had multiple staff working, but when less needed, staff numbers were reduced to keep costs tightly managed.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Old.St Labs could have done differently?

Nothing material

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO of a transportation company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Our company provides ground transport solutions for travel, mobility and transport companies

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Old.St Labs to accomplish?

• Build a mobile booking tool
• Support front end single sign on development

SOLUTION

How did you find Old.St Labs?

Referral

Why did you select Old.St Labs over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Old.St Labs were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Optimise the desktop booking tool for mobile usage. Redevelop the customer journey from scratch against provided designs. Integrate several APIs that allow the calling of data from the core platform as well as addressing and mapping APIs. Optimise for all mobile devices. Ensure solution can be whitelabelled for clients. Deliver solution to client for QA within 3 sprints.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Delivery on time and against budget. Successful integration of the APIs.

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

Old Street have exceptional project management. The team planned the project thoroughly, keen to identify all requirements and known unknowns ahead of project start to ensure success. During the project all meetings were attended and kept concise. All changes to the project were recorded and meeting notes sent out in a timely fashion. This ensured that the project run on time.

What was your primary form of communication with Old.St Labs?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Old Street have a great culture and develop a great understanding of the client's needs. Minor amends were not left to hold a project up and the development team would adapt to any situation quickly.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Old.St Labs could have done differently?

None they were amazing

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am an Executive of East Care

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Improves outcomes for vulnerable adults by providing enhanced professional development for their carers

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Old.St Labs to accomplish?

• company and app brand
• clickable product prototype
• MVP for users to login
• company startup kit (ppt deck, pitch deck etc)

SOLUTION

How did you find Old.St Labs?

Referral

Why did you select Old.St Labs over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

What was the size of Old.St Labs’s team?

2-5 Employees

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

From 'napkin to launch'. Old St provided design of company brand, and converted sketches in notepads to a clickable prototype and pitch deck, which allowed us to generate clients, and then worked with our CTO to create a live MVP on time and in budget

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• on time on budget and to standard.

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

all good. great balance of pragmatism and client focus. very collaborative but held us to account for progress

What was your primary form of communication with Old.St Labs?

• Virtual Meeting,
• Email or Messaging App

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

felt like an extension of our business not an agency. They were invested in the same outcomes as we were.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Old.St Labs could have done differently?

not so much- would happily go through the same process again and indeed am planning to.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the founder and managing partner of Balance Legal Capital. We are a litigation funder, helping businesses and individuals obtain access to justice by funding the costs of their legal claims.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Old.St Labs?

We hired Old.St Labs to help us overhaul and bring up to date our website. We needed to do a better job of telling the story of our solutions and better address our target personas. We also needed a more robust webpage design platform that would produce a better UX.

SOLUTION

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

We sought quotes from a number of web design agencies that had been recommended by word of mouth. Old.St Labs were stood out in terms of really taking the time to understand our business, competitors, and needs and were excellent on price.

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

OldSt were methodical and professional in their approach. They researched our competitors and industry area in order to get a feel for recurring themes/messages and elements we might want to emulate or avoid. Then they produced a number of style guides for us to choose from, and then set about taking our old content and breathing life into it with the new styles. They provided access to Figma and other tools so that we could easily see wireframes and mock ups of the site and give feedback along the way and iterate until we were 100% happy with the result. Then those designs and content were transferred to the web build team where it was built in full in a staging site on Webflow. Any bugs/issues were ironed out using ClickUp Feedback tool. Then the site was published live on our real corporate domain.

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

Rob Woodhead supervised the project and ensured smooth translation between our ideas and converting that into actionable specifications that his designers and coders could deliver. Joyce Albos provided fantastic designs in line with our instructions and showed great patience when I needed certain hero images for example to be iterated. Lui Seneca took Joyce's designs and lead on the web building in Webflow. Excellent work too. Others provided further back end technical support at the go-live stage.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We've received excellent feedback about our website and our web traffic has increased hugely. My team is now proud of our website and think it does a great job of expressing our identity.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

OldSt.Labs were very effecient communicators and turned around work ideas and queries very quickly. They used collaboration tools very efficiently - such as Figma, ClickUp, and Webflow, so that we could communicate areas that needed to be changed and provided direct access for us to do our own drafting of text directly into the design platforms. They sped things up a lot, particularly toward the end.

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

Genuine care and desire to do a good job. Patience in allowing us work out what we wanted.

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

We both expected the project to be quicker but probably both suffered from optimism bias on duration.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Peace Direct is a non-profit based in the UK and US that supports the work of peacebuilders around the world

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Old.St Labs, and what were your goals?

Old St Labs were hired to redevelop the frontend of one of our more complex web-based projects, Platform4Dialogue. After speaking to users we had identified a need to make it more intuitive and user-friendly.

SOLUTION

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

We selected them after an online search and speaking with agencies we've used in the past. After some discussions we chose Old St based on there experience and professionalism.

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

After a series of initial discussions where we explored requirements and needs, we agreed on the scope of the project. During the design phase Old St interated on a series of lo-fi, then hi-fi designs based on our feedback. During the development phase, we had weekly checkins on the progress. The main technologies used were Django and React.

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

There was a project manager, two developers and a someone in a quality assurance role.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have yet to fully launch the project. Initial feedback has ben positive.

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

The project management was very professional, with regular, clear communication.

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

The development work was fantastic and the communication was clear and professional.

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

No

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the operations manager of a branding agency. We offer strategic advice to a wide range of international clients.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Old.St Labs, and what were your goals?

We revamped our website a year ago and wanted to add a page to showcase a new product offering, as well as make several navigational updates. Unfortunately our original developer was no longer around and we needed a developer that could understand the way it had originally been built.

SOLUTION

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

We had reached out to a few recommended developers to get their costs and approach on making the changes required. Old St Labs seemed confident in taking on the challenge of learning a new platform, vs other developers who pushed us to rebuild the whole site. Their price was competitive and their approach was solid.

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

We had a kick off call to go through our changes and new design, and meet the team. They followed up with mockups to ensure they had understood brief and we shared all our assets with the developer. The website was built in Netlify with content managed on Prismic.

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

A project manager oversaw the process while a developer/designer worked to build the site.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The build of the site was quick and required minimal input from our side. We found the communication of the team to be excellent, and they provided us regular progress updates.

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

We communicated with the team over WhatsApp which was a really efficient way to fire fast questions. Timelines were shared early on and we were really pleased with the pace of the work.

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

Old.St Labs were very flexible in taking our designs (from Illustrator!) and developing them without the additional cost of using a digital designer. They were flexible and professional, giving us advice on how we could efficiently manage our site in the future.

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

No we found it incredibly easy to work with Old.St Labs and will definitely be recommending them to others.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO at Sul Pont - the first professional platform for classical musicians.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Old.St Labs?

The requirement was to design a clickable prototype of the future mobile app prior the actual development. We needed a comprehensive prototype of the future app to showcase to potential investors. Also, we needed it to test and collect feedback from potential users.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We searched online for the best UI/UX developers in London and shortlisted 5. After interviewing them, we chose this vendor based on their professionalism, experience, and exceptionally supportive and helpful communication. They were willing to offer us a couple of workshops free of charge, where we got convinced that this is a very dedicated company that cares about its clients and the quality of the services they offer.

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

The project was to create a design of a mobile app for classical musicians. Sul Pont is the platform that offers a unique way to connect musicians, industry professionals, and music lovers. Our innovative social platform bridges the gap between musicians, using advanced technology - our CUI tool (Comprehensive Utility-tool for Interconnection). Old St helped us to work through all stages of the application. They guided us in the correct direction when it came to choosing the first features and functionality of the app and gave invaluable advice.

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

As this was a relatively small project, we were working with a project leader and a designer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We're pleased with the deliverables from Old St team. The UX/UI serves as the foundation for the app we're going to develop in the nearest future. Their work perfectly reflects our vision we had at the start, helping us create a user-friendly and easy-to-navigate mobile app. We are exceptionally happy with the outcomes of our work together. The design is immaculate and very thought through. We are grateful to the team for their hard and dedicated work.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The team members were easy to communicate and very responsive, they also provided us with frequent updates. We had google meets meetings that worked out very well. Everything was delivered on time.

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

The team members were very creative and gave us very good suggestions on how to improve on our existing ideas. They were patient and willing to apply constant amendments that we were requiring. We are grateful.

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

Everything was great and we are hoping to work with Old St again in the future.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and founder of rXperius, a market analysis company focusing on the pharmaceutical industry. We use technology to reach our prescription drug users directly.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Old.St Labs?

We were looking to derive and develop our novel technology as a direct way to reach consumers. Our main challenge was finding someone who understood our problem and whom we could trust.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

When we started this project, we had an understanding of the wireframe, layout, and design that we were looking for. Additionally, our CTO was very instrumental in helping us define the technical specifications, identifying key players to get input and advice from in terms of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance requirements and the security features needed.

With the technology laid out, we communicated with Rob (Co-Founder), who ran many of the projects in Old.St Labs. We started talking regularly to look through all of the information that we provided. We also had several calls to go over our thoughts, direction, and timeline expectations around producing our product.

Rob reasonably scoped the project based on the number of people he had on his staff, their expertise, and other factors that weighed into building it out. It was clear that we would need other people to provide input for us, but Old.St Labs was very amenable to working with other groups and teams throughout our partnership. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with 7–8 people from Old.St Labs over our engagement. Rob’s team included a software developer who helped manage all the staff and a team leader who was developing our technology. We also worked on and off with three other programmers to build out some of the Microsoft services and test the whole layout.

Additionally, we worked with a designer who was in charge of the design and layout of our product, including its colors and appearance on mobile devices. We had a program on our computer where we could go in and make changes to the layout. Then, they could go in and implement the changes requested.

How did you come to work with Old.St Labs?

We had worked with various freelancers and development shops, but we didn’t feel that any of them understood the nuances of developing a HIPAA compliant mobile platform. Those developers neither understood a lot of the government regulations that we needed to fulfill to ensure that our data remained secure and avoid issues if the government ever audited us.

We reached out to Old.St Labs and felt that they were transparent in the services that they provided and in their pricing structure. They also were open to interact on a regular basis and accommodate their schedule to meet our needs.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’re extremely satisfied with the overall function flow of the pages going through the app. Old.St Labs was great at pulling together and highlighting some of the structures that we needed to be part of our system so that our users could understand where they were in the process. They worked very well.

How did Old.St Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

Old.St Labs’ project management was great. We never had problems with our communication, and we met with them once or twice a week. Every week, we went through the project and defined the timelines of the tasks that we needed to complete, both from our side and Old.St Labs’ side. They also provided us with regular updates and clarifications.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Old.St Labs’ responsiveness to their customer requests was impressive. They did their best to implement our requirements in a cost-effective and timely manner. Since we started talking to Rob about this development, it was clear that he would deliver our product in a much more timely manner and at a better cost than other providers.

Are there any areas they could improve?

As we went further into the project, we wanted things to go faster. However, Rob was managing other clients, and we were demanding more of his staff. It would have been great if Old.St Labs hired more people so that the process went even faster.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Develop a rapport with Old.St Labs team up front, and communicate with them in a way that makes you feel more productive. Rob’s ability to pull together their team has a big impact and adds a lot of value to your final product.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the production director at Pixel Artworks, which is primarily a live event production company. Now, we also specialize in digital and virtual events.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Old.St Labs?

We needed to build a virtual event platform because the live, in-person events industry has taken a downturn. We brought in Old.St Labs to help us with this project.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Old.St Labs helps us design a registration and login system that will be able to cater to tens of thousands of event participants. Along with that, they’ve built a user management system so that we could manage multiple events concurrently in-house.

We usually get a brief from various clients about what virtual event they want to hold and how they want the consumers to access the site. Going by that, we would then explain to them how the registration and login system should be set up. Old.St Labs would provide us with a WildFly document and a set of user stories with corresponding estimates. 

When we’ve agreed on the final scope and have provided Old.St Labs with all the creative assets, their team then goes to build the platform. Before the site goes live, we go through a process of client reviews until we’re happy with the outcome. Old.St Labs has shown us how to set up various environments so we could test the builds before presenting them to the clients and, eventually, pushing them to production. 

Old.St Labs also helps us with the AWS architecture and provides us IT security consultancy. 

What is the team composition?

I work primarily with Rob W. (Co-Founder) and Dennis (Senior Lead Developer). Robin (Senior Technical Advisor) is our security consultant. 

How did you come to work with Old.St Labs?

They were recommended to us by my managing director, so we ended up working with them.

How much have you invested with them?

In total, we’ve spent about £30,000 (approximately $41,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Old.St Labs in September 2020. We’ve completed three major projects and are in the talks to work on more over the coming months.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve managed to successfully put on a virtual event for 50,000 concurrent users on the event site, even though virtual events are a new area for us and each event is bespoke. We have the capacity to host even more than 50,000 participants since everything that Old.St Labs has built for us has been solid and robust. So far, we haven’t had any issues with the works they’ve completed.

It’s been a really great experience working with their team. They are extremely personable, friendly, and open to all sorts of last-minute requests, which happen quite regularly in our brand of work. Old.St Labs is very flexible and adaptive to the varying demands of the industry. 

How did Old.St Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

They perform well in the sense that they provide us with good oversight of their capacity and schedule. They’ve stuck to timelines and provided very good project management. We tend to use our own tools that are more geared towards live events. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I don’t have a huge amount of experience with development houses, but the difference between Old.St Labs and other developers is that they are ready and willing to adapt. They make themselves available at my request. In our industry, things change quite rapidly and we weren’t always able to give them a full and detailed scope. Despite that, though, changes are always well-received and they act on it quickly.

They also have a really good end-to-end process of receiving the brief, understanding it, and then executing it.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t see anything that they can improve on.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure that you have all the information required for Old.St Labs to carry out the work efficiently. Have a very well-defined brief to get the most out of them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director and co-founder of a startup in the health industry. We are focused on emerging evidence surrounding the reduction of risks to neurodegenerative conditions, like dementia. What we do is two-fold: information and business, or products and services. 

Our online platform is like a one-stop-shop for helping people understand what brain health is, why it’s important, and the simple steps they can take to keep the brain healthy. We’re focusing on sustainable lifestyle changes that can affect the physiological aspects of the brain, like blood flow, oxidative protection, and neuronal structure.

We’ve had an incredible engagement with the academic community across Europe and North America and we’ve worked with specialists to produce content, like blogs and videos, about how nutrition, exercise, and sleep can affect brain health. The goal is to make brain health take off the way mental health and gut health have in the past years.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Old St. Labs?

When we were starting out, we didn’t have a huge amount of experience and didn’t go down the right path. We were working with a different group that would build our website on a relatively high source requirement platform, which didn’t really suit our needs. We recognized the problem and asked Old.St Labs to rebuild the site using the content and general branding that we already had.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

For this project, we’ve set parameters for Old.St Labs, but at the same time, we’ve left them some room to maneuver. 

They have helped us shift from our old CMS to WordPress, keeping the menu structure on our website, as well as some icons that the previous company had created. We’ve also briefed their team to use and tweak our existing branding, logo, and color palette to make them look slick. 

What is the team composition?

Rob W. (Co-Founder) is our main point of contact, but he was on paternity leave at the start of the project so we worked with Rob L. (Co-Founder) for a brief period. On a day-to-day basis, we interact with Joyce (Designer) and Louie (Developer).

How did you come to work with Old St. Labs?

We came to work with Old.St Labs through a personal connection. I had been introduced to their co-founder and started talking with him about a completely different topic, like early user engagement and gathering insights from early users of platforms. Later on, we got back in touch with him and asked for his help on this project. 

How much have you invested with them?

Up to this point in the engagement, our spend has been around £10,000 (approximately $14,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

The rebuilding of the website occurred between September–November 2020, but we now have them on retainer to develop more web pages. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

All around, there has been overwhelmingly positive feedback. Early users and people we’ve engaged with in the brain health network say that our revamped site looks 100 times better than the old version. Since the rebuild, we’ve also added a number of pages that Old.St Labs is designing. 

We’re still working on our different channels for audience growth, which hasn’t progressed due to COVID-19, but Old.St Labs nailed it in terms of efficiently delivering what we wanted and more. They’ve got a really good design team and we’re delighted with what they’ve done. 

What I really wanted was a group that could give input and not just take direction, since the previous company we worked with was highly prescriptive and showed no initiative. We can give Old.St Labs our ideas and they help make them better. 

How did Old St. Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management is excellent. They’ve set up a Trello board where we’ve got different cards for tasks to do, tasks in progress, finished tasks, and outcomes to review. They also use the tool to monitor what we want to test and tweak.  It’s an excellent way of managing lots of little ideas from a small company like ours and helps in terms of delivery and timelines. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The highlight of their service is the transformation that they’ve delivered on the website. We’ve got excellent content coming from the professors and academics who work with us, but all of these are pointless with a rubbish site and UX. Having a good UX is important as it helps pages to rank and allows us to show our content. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

It’s hard to name anything that they could improve on. We’ve been very happy with them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

From our experience, really take the time on defining the scope to understand what you want, how much bandwidth they have to operate, and what different options they can give you. I would encourage potential customers to give Old.St Labs room to maneuver because they’re good at what they do.