SKD

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We're a software service company with an IoT element and we develop health, safety, and workforce management software for companies. I'm the CEO of the company and we’re located in London, England.

What challenge were you trying to address with SKD?

We needed someone to design the UI/UX for our products, as well as our marketing assets.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Sergey (UI/UX Product Designer) leads our project using Adobe XD as his main tool for producing technical prototypes. We have a web app and two mobile apps, all of which are relatively complicated to develop. 

Our main priority is to have one designer unify all of the UI components that we use into one standardized library. We also wanted to give our developer access to our library of components, and make the UX consistently performs across all three products — this is so when a customer uses one product, they’ll have no problems switching over to another one seamlessly.

He also used JIRA when working with the development team, and Asana when working with the business team.

What is the team composition?

I only interact with Sergey.

How did you come to work with SKD?

We found them through Upwork.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $25,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2020 and the partnership is still ongoing.

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

One area of success is with our customers, who we get excellent feedback from regarding the quality of the UX. The other area that's also been a huge success is how well that they’ve worked with the rest of our team. Additionally, they ended up designing our website and they’re able to use the knowledge they have about our products with the project.

The typical challenge for every designer is the turnaround time. However, Sergey is able to quickly accomplish his tasks so that’s never been a problem. He’s very responsive on every engagement, which enables him to consistently deliver on his service.

How did SKD perform from a project management standpoint?

Sergey is very efficient in his communication skills and they have the ability to stick to deadlines and the budget. We primarily use Slack as a company for internal comms, and we also use it to make calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re impressed with their excellent approach to knowing the UX before jumping into the design. Sergey has a very rapid turnaround time so we can find a solution to our design problems, and turn our concepts into a prototype quickly. This is very important from a design perspective, and it’s something we found they do better than anyone else we’ve worked with.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They don’t need to improve on anything. They’re extremely good at what they do.

Any advice for potential customers?

I would suggest integrating Sergey as much into your team and project as possible, since some places would have a more hands-off supplier-buyer relationship. You will get all of the benefits of having Sergey’s ability to work collaboratively with your internal team on solving the problems.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Educational technology company providing teachers with a platform for communicating with students' contacts, in order to ensure the link between teacher and parent remains strong. We serve many districts in several states. I'm a lead frontend developer here.

For what projects/services did your company hire SK (Sergey Karpuk)?

We wanted a refresh of our communications-based mobile app. Though many features had been added, it never received a proper design to accommodate the growth.

What were your goals for this project?

Redesign our mobile application in order to better serve customers.

How did you select this vendor?

Through a posting on Dribbble.

Describe the project in detail.

Sergey gave us the IA, and then we promptly received deliverables based on the milestones we discussed.

What was the team composition?

Myself (frontend developer), my supervisor, and the CEO.

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

The product hasn't been fully built yet, but we would absolutely work with Sergey again. The designs he gave us are incredible.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The workflow was amazing, and the communication was great.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The design talent is amazing, but the speed in both understanding the needs and delivering is absolutely phenomenal.

Are there any areas for improvement?

None.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a non profit 501(c)(3) providing a communication platform for non profits & religious charities to manage workflows more efficiently.

For what projects/services did your company hire SK (Sergey Karpuk)?

To structure the IA as well as the design the UI/UX.

What were your goals for this project?

Allows groups to work and communicate in a more efficient, real time environment.

How did you select this vendor?

Sergey's knowledge and expertise on user flows and best practices are very keen. He knows and understands great design.

Describe the project in detail.

We started with the IA, then worked on all user UI/UX screens. this also include admin pages for user management.

What was the team composition?

Founder, client, stakeholders, designers, developers, QA managers.

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

The project was accepted by one of the largest religious organizations in the world. The platform is being used by people globally.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Very efficient scrum method.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Sergey understands the problems and finds simple logical solutions.

Are there any areas for improvement?

none.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Genus is an AI driven patient relationship management platform. I am the founder and CEO.

For what projects/services did your company hire SK (Sergey Karpuk)?

Sergey was our head of UX developing experiences for mobile and web applications for medical users. He provided amazing insights into design, UX and often how the product can be improved.

What were your goals for this project?

Develop new UI for new features, update legacy UI for mobile and web apps.

How did you select this vendor?

We connected online and I had a chance to review his portfolio. He had done great work.

Describe the project in detail.

Genus an AI platform with mobile applications for patients and web-based applications for physicians/clinical staff. The project involved developing new UI for some of the latest functions we were adding to the platform such as workflows, patient forms and patient charts.

We also redesigned the patient applications so we can give the patients the ability to have native applications that allowed them to track and manage their own healthcare.

What was the team composition?

The team included front and back end developers, product managers and data scientists.

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

Sergey was immaculate in his designs. He took great pains to understand our industry, its problems and develop solutions that made sense. He also incorporated iterations into his designs that allowed us to improve them quickly.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Excellent. We had 3 times per week standups that allowed the teams to collaborate and discuss issues. we also engaged adhoc meetings when further discussions were needed.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their quality of work, communication, and professionalism were great.

Are there any areas for improvement?

N/A

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am CEO of the Group of company Forcinox LLC that is highly engaged in manufacturing, outsourcing production and wholesales business of steel products for gas, energy companies and nuclear power stations. I manage the projects in CIS countries with 20 employees located in Belarus and Russia. Our core business is to be on the edge of technological progress to develop new ways of satisfying our clients' needs. We permanently gather all data of our clients' operational business processes to design and manufacture special steel items to reduce our clients' operational costs and raise their profit.

For what projects/services did your company hire SK (Sergey Karpuk)?

As a part of a digital transformation process in our company we decided to make automatization of our main internal processes. Because of a very specific needs in our domain we didn’t find an existing tool on the market to cover everything. We tried to adopt multiple existing services combining them, but this approach didn’t work for us really well in terms of complexity and costs. That’s why we decided to build our own tool.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to digitize and automate our internal processes to significantly increase speed of work and performance.

How did you select this vendor?

Since it was our first experience in building our own software, we decided to start with the design piece and hire an independent contractor to be able to work closely with him determining all details, with studios this process looked more difficult. We made our final decision based on his portfolio and previous experience.

Describe the project in detail.

Once we signed an agreement, we started with research phase to determine everything in detail since we had only rough idea and overall vision for the future product. Sergey guided us proficiently through the process and explained every single step we need to do. We had multiple briefing sessions, made internal survey collecting employees feedback, defined real problems we want to solve and goals we need to achieve etc. After research phase Sergey came up with prototype which we tested on our end users, made some changes and, after approving visual direction, Sergey produced a high fidelity version of all mockups.

What was the team composition?

There was only one person since we hired an independent freelancer for the design part.

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

After the design part of this project was finished and we received all resources from Sergey, we hired a team of developers to build a final product. We have been using this tool for more than 8 months since release and are more than happy with the results, it simplifies our employees daily routine a lot, it’s easy to use, fast and powerful.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Communication was perfect, everything was done in time. Since we didn’t have a lot of experience in building digital products, thanks to Sergey’s suggestions and detailed explanations we saved a lot of time.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

We were impressed by valuable insights and suggestions on almost every small detail. Really well done.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We were fully satisfied with the result and collaboration.