Pixel Palace Pty Ltd

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for Queensland University in Western Australia. I hold several positions but in terms of the relevance of what we’re discussing here, I’m the study area coordinator for industrial design. I was also the chair of the exhibition committee at the school.

What challenge were you trying to address with Pixel Palace Pty Ltd?

We have a large exhibition for our students of the school of design at the end of each year. Last year was the first time that the exhibition went fully online as a result of COVID-19. We reached out to a few companies including Pixel Palace, to help us promote our students, exhibit their work in a professional way, and achieve it in a timely manner.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Pixel Palace built a website to showcase the design exhibit of our students. It’s a complex exhibition site featuring the six disciplines of our school each with its own flavor and design style. There are lots of students under those disciplines so expressing and communicating their work was really important.

We had a rough idea of what we wanted, but Pixel Palace really understood what we needed from the messaging to the visual style. We didn’t want the website to overpower the content which can easily happen. However, they understood the kind of dynamic that needed to happen in the web design. I was really surprised because the first concept that they delivered just hit the nail on the head.

We proposed this challenge to Pixel Palace and they came back with a reasonable, manageable, functional, and well-designed solution. I was mainly part of the committee chair, so I was the one approving the financial stuff, as well as the design and content elements.

What is the team composition?

I’m sure there were more people working in the background but I mostly dealt with three. There was Jen (Agency Director) who I closely worked with at the beginning. I also worked with Hannah (Frontend Designer) and George (Digital Project Manager). They were really great.

How did you come to work with Pixel Palace Pty Ltd?

I’m very familiar with the design industry here in Brisbane, but I have not heard of Pixel Palace before. We were looking for some teams and Pixel Palace was one of the companies that one of my colleagues on the exhibition committee recommended.

I looked them up and thought their website looked nice and clean. They had the style that we really wanted to go with. There were a couple of other companies that we went to but they were either over budget, or underprepared. A few of them came back after our meetings and kept repeating that this was a very complex project to finish in such a short period of time. It’s fine that they said that because I already knew that going in.

However, what I appreciate about Pixel Palace, especially Jen, she said that the project was really complicated but they were really excited about working with me on this. She also told me they were going to do their best to make it work and I really appreciated that kind of attitude at the start.

Another thing I appreciate was Pixel Palace’s proposal wasn’t just a cut and paste job from every other proposal they had thought about. They talked in a language that made sense to us. This was the key thing because I had to get approval from the school management committee here at my university. They looked at the proposal and said they clearly know what we’re talking about and what we want.

How much have you invested with them?

It weas between $25,000–$30,000AUD (Around $19,300USD–$23,100USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them from August–November 2020.

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

There are some hard targets that we looked for in terms of engagement — Like people who visit and engage with the website. This is our first time doing a fully online exhibition because usually, we do it face to face at the university. Before, we used to get 2000 people in one night, and then about 500–1000 extra people in the following days. 

Having a live exhibition is exciting, but it only exists for a few days. That’s why we’re very happy about the opportunity of having the website online for basically forever. We can always send people the link to the website so they can see the works of our students. 

We have the hard metrics for what kind of visitors are visiting our website, and from what part of the world they’re from. Additionally, we also have the qualitative soft metrics which are made up of what people are commenting on social media and what they’re saying about the work. We’ve seen a lot of positive feedback from students and industry partners.

There are things we need to improve on but we’re very happy with it.

They delivered the solution really well. They were on time and always seemed to be on top of everything. The development phase was a very stressful period, but they never came to us with any stressful feedback or problems — we just had a really great experience with the whole team. 

There were a lot of technical challenges I knew they had to deal with themselves before coming to me. When they couldn’t manage it, they would come and approach me. I really appreciated that because I was dealing with a lot of other stuff as well.

How did Pixel Palace Pty Ltd perform from a project management standpoint?

I cannot recall a time when they’ve been late. They’re either early or on time with everything.

There was maybe one time when they said they won’t be able to deliver a task, which was fine because it wasn’t anything major. They have always met all of the important deadlines — there were definitely no issues there from our end.

We typically communicate through phone calls and emails.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We were impressed with their attitude towards the project and the complexity of the things we had to deal with. Their attitude goes a long way in terms of making us feel confident that they’re on top of things. I know they’re stressed and so are we, but I know I have a team that is on my side on the other end of it. The fact that they deliver on time was really important as well, but it had more to do with the sense of confidence that I got from them. I knew they could deliver what was a really important project for us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It’s not that I’m uncomfortable giving any kind of constructive feedback, but there really is nothing they could improve on. I will not hesitate in engaging with them again for any other project.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice is to keep constant communication. Just like with any design service company, which I have a background in as well, the more we can get from the client, the easier our job gets. The team at Pixel Palace approached this the same way and were very keen to hear from us about what we liked, what we didn’t like, what we were going for, and what we envisioned this to be.