Rocketmakers

BACKGROUND

I am the CEO of Homegrown Learning

Collage is a dynamic platform designed for home-educating families. It simplifies recording and celebrates learning, offering a comprehensive view of a child's journey through an intuitive, user-friendly interface.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

• Complete version 2 of the app.
• Make the app user friendly
• Add features that make life easier for home educating families

SOLUTION

Online Search

Great culture fit

2-5 Employees

Collage exists to help home-educating families collect, organise the evidence they need to demonstrate their child's learning, a real gap for a community that mainstream education technology tends to overlook. By the time Rocketmakers became involved, the project was in serious trouble. I had a codebase that simply was in a place that could be moved forward, substantial technical debt and no clear path forward, which for a small founder-led business is close to existential. Rocketmakers took it on with a level of honesty and patience I did not expect. They started by working methodically through the inherited code to establish what could be salvaged and what needed rebuilding. That stage showed almost no visible progress, but it was exactly the right thing to do, and they were straight with me about why it mattered. From there they rebuilt and stabilised the platform, improved the architecture and brought it to a standard I could genuinely launch a new version with confidence. Collage is now live with 150 active families and 800 more on the waiting list. Coming from where this project was, that is a genuine turnaround, and I would recommend Rocketmakers without hesitation.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Feedback from customers.

I really appreciate all your hard work and I think Collage makes an actual difference for many home educators – so thank you all!! ❤️

Thank you for putting the subjects so you can select more than one when I am capturing my learning. I love this. It makes it soooo much easier. I like the task bar as this will make it easier for me to track what I need to do and for my Mum setting the work for me as she goes to work so I can't ask her. At the moment she needs to write all over my work books "Date - do this in here, do this in your maths book" etc. so this will work better I think. I love the drag and drop for photos and videos. This makes things easier as well.  

The team communicated very effectively through Slack, which allowed us to keep conversations flowing and address any issues as soon as they arose. They created a detailed timeline with regular sprint meetings, which enabled us to track progress and stay on top of key milestones. They were also very supportive of my situation and helped me not only complete the build successfully but also plan the next steps moving forward.

• In-Person Meeting
• Virtual Meeting

Rocketmakers’ app developers shared the same ethos of collaboration, transparency and putting the user at the centre of the development process. What stood out as unique was their ability to combine this approach with practical, solution-focused thinking, making complex technical decisions feel clear and manageable throughout the build.

NO

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Nature Story Program Manager of Wildscreen

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Wildscreen is a charity that connects people with nature through wildlife media.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Rocketmakers to accomplish?

• Bring our much-loved wildlife collection back into public access after Arkive was forced offline in 2019, and keep it free for anyone in the world to use.
• Build a system that was far easier to manage, update and maintain than the previous one, so our small team could keep it running.
• Keep running costs low enough that the resource stays sustainably available, which was the reason the original Arkive had to close.
• Encourage the public, particularly teenage school children, to keep exploring the collection rather than just searching once and leaving.
• Create a platform robust enough to scale as our vast collection of analogue assets is digitised and added over the coming years.

SOLUTION

How did you find Rocketmakers?

Referral

Why did you select Rocketmakers over others?

• High ratings
• Close to my geographic location
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Rocketmakers were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Arkive was a much treasured resource for everyone from students to scientists, and having to take it offline in 2019 was a very difficult decision for us. When we raised the funds to bring it back, we needed a partner who understood both the technical challenge and what the collection means to people. Rocketmakers were exactly that. They started with a proper discovery process, helping us define our vision and, crucially, who we most wanted to reach. Agreeing that teenage school children were our priority audience shaped everything that followed, from the visual design to writing all the text for a maximum reading age of 12. The technical thinking was genuinely impressive. Rather than persisting with the complicated tagging system that made our old database so slow to update, they built the recommendation engine around a globally recognised taxonomy of 8.1 million species. That means related content surfaces automatically and our team can add new media far more quickly and with far less risk of error. They also built us an admin dashboard that makes managing the collection straightforward. What they built is robust enough for us to keep growing, but with low enough running costs to make sure this resource stays available, which was the whole problem we faced before. Wildscreen ARK launched in early 2024 and now serves over 100,000 media requests a month. Continuing our partnership with Rocketmakers was a no-brainer, and we look forward to expanding the ARK with them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Wildscreen ARK launched in early 2024 and now regularly serves over 100,000 media requests per month, and growing.

Running costs are low enough to keep the collection freely available, solving the problem that forced the original Arkive offline.

The GBIF Backbone Taxonomy of 8.1 million species replaced our old tagging system, making uploads far quicker and dramatically reducing human error.

An admin dashboard lets our team load new media and assign it to the right species quickly and easily, rather than tagging everything manually.

Following the successful launch we commissioned further work, including new education pages, and are exploring recovering Arkive's wider media library.

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

The team delivered an excellent level of professional project management. Everything delivered on time, to budget, with total clarity throughout. They listened carefully to what we needed, pivoted as was required and did everything with the utmost professionalism. They were brilliant.

What was your primary form of communication with Rocketmakers?

Virtual Meeting

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

Rocketmakers took time to understand our charitable objectives from the start - and also committed considerable development budget to the project through their Collaboratorium fund, which we were incredibly grateful for.

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

None.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Support Officer of a veteran charitable organization.

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Charitable organisation for Veterans

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Rocketmakers to accomplish?

• Modernise an existing assessment
• Compile a new software tool to use within the organisation

SOLUTION

How did you find Rocketmakers?

Online Search

Why did you select Rocketmakers over others?

• Great culture fit
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Rocketmakers were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

To deliver a modern software tool we can use with clients to map possible routes ahead for us to investigate further.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

TBC as still in early stages of use but so far a very positive outcome from those who have both used or viewed it.

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

We asked Rocketmakers to help digitise part of a programme we use with our clients that had become outdated and required modernising, starting with our a spreadsheet-based assessment we regularly use. They turned it into a clear, supervised digital tool that captures responses and automatically produces the profiles and progress charts another department within the organisation used to compile by hand, and built a sensitive AI chat tool to help clients open up about their interests. They understood the sensitivity of our work, were collaborative and pragmatic with a limited first-phase budget, and kept us well informed throughout. 

What was your primary form of communication with Rocketmakers?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Their positive, enthusiastic approach, ability to accommodate all our requests without coming across as it may be a problem, superb updates via slack and a clear vision that aligned with our requirements.

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

Not that i came across.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

 I am the Founder of an advertising & marketing company 

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Our product measures creative quality in advertising systematically so every designer, brand, and media owner can optimize outcomes with precision.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Rocketmakers to accomplish?

• We came to them with an ambitious idea: to bring objective, standardised assessment to out-of-home advertising design, a medium that has always resisted consistent evaluation because of its deliberately unusual creative and difficult viewing conditions.

SOLUTION

How did you find Rocketmakers?

Online Search

Why did you select Rocketmakers over others?

• High ratings
• Close to my geographic location
• Great culture fit

How many teammates from Rocketmakers were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

They designed and built an AI and machine learning platform that analyses a design across a minimum of 20 attributes, measures it against proven OOH principles, and distils everything into three clear metrics along with an overall compliance score. It produces an attention heat map and a report full of actionable guidance, all within seconds and at low cost. What used to be slow and subjective is now fast, consistent and evidence-based.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Feasibility study / Prototype / MVP - all delivered.

The quality of the work was recognised when we won the Innovation Award at the 2024 UK Dev Awards, with the judges praising it as a great example of machine learning applied in a commercial setting.

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

The team consistently met deadlines.

What was your primary form of communication with Rocketmakers?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Lateral thinking and willingness to find solutions to a challenge that did not have an obvious answer.

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

Nothing springs to mind.