Skyward Digital

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of Blackwood Group, an executive headhunter recruitment firm. We’ve been around for over 20 years. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Skyward Digital?

We had an internal application that was very dated and was a traditional Windows Forms application. We’re not designers and needed help with UX/UI design. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve engaged them to take a look at our existing application to see what they can come up with. We gave them a quick demo of what we had, and then the owner of Skyward Digital came down to see the culture of our firm. The owner sat with people to see how they used the existing application.

Skyward Digital has been redesigning our internal application from a look and feel point of view and handling the UI/UX design. We are handling the coding on our side. Skyward Digital is using Figma to help make a more productive application, and they are responsible for making tweaks and updates. 

What is the team composition? 

Dan (Founder & CEO) started the designs off, and that was taken over by a designer. We’ve had three people working on the project. 

How did you come to work with Skyward Digital?

I found them online. I had seen some pieces Dan had done before, and I approached him. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent over £100,000 (approximately $125,000 USD).  

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2022, and the engagement is ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The project hasn’t gone live yet because we’re still coding it, but we’re very happy with the designs. It has the style that we were aiming to achieve. 

How did Skyward Digital perform from a project management standpoint?

We have regular catch-up meetings, and we speak to David on Figma or through email. We generally get a rapid response from Skyward Digital, and they deliver on time and on budget.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re very happy with the value for money and the designs that we receive from Skyward Digital. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing I’d have them improve. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you have an internal application, send screenshots and videos of people using it and invite Skyward Digital to come to your offices to see your staff using it. This will allow them to see the pain points and they can get a quicker understanding of your domain and terminology. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Chief Executive Officer of Pigeon

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Provides technology for people to better help them lend money to their friends, family, and people in their community.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Skyward Digital to accomplish?

• Build a new marketing website

SOLUTION

How did you find Skyward Digital?

Referral

Why did you select Skyward Digital over others?

Great culture fit, Good value for cost, Referred to me, Company values aligned

What was the size of Skyward Digital’s team?

2-5 Employees

What was your primary form of communication with Skyward Digital?

Virtual Meeting, Email or Messaging App

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

We employed Skyward to help us build an extendable marketing website. This website needed to be capable of hosting SEO-optimized written content, and dynamic elements, including submission forms and user-editable interfaces, and do so in an inviting and friendly design capable of scaling to hundreds of thousands of visitors a month.

Over time our goal was to deliver these items in a six-month timeframe to enable our business to grow its inbound leads via search engine traffic while also providing resources for existing users of our product to learn more and grow within our ecosystem. All of these items were delivered to us and have been the cornerstone of our company's marketing since its creation.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• Launch of our marketing website
• Up-time resilience of our marketing website
• The crawlability of our website

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

Project management for the most part was sound. The pacing of our project might have had some room to improve, but we were one of Skyward's first clients, and getting a great team pacing dynamic is hard to get right on the first go around!

Aside from that, we were able to deliver all items asked for and more and were extremely satisfied with the end result of our product! Skyward rose to the challenging occasion of having to build a brand new modular website from scratch in a compressed timeline, and they were ultimately able to get everything to the finish line as hoped for!

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

We were super impressed by Skyward's ability to do a little bit of everything. By the end of our project, we had testing frameworks in place that we did not have prior, high-class UI/UX elements representing our brand that we did not have prior, and pretty much 99% uptime of the technology itself with minimal maintenance needed over time, and all done so at a cost we felt was fair and affordable! We would highly recommend working with Skyward for pretty much any digital solution!

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

Touched on this prior, but project management could be improved. Getting things done on time and with quality is super important. At the end of the day, all expectations of our work with Skyward were completed with excellence and quality, just being able to stay on time with expected deliverables is a potential point of improvement.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Founder of Message Aid

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Optimize message queue (MQ) based systems

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Skyward Digital to accomplish?

• UI/UX Design
• Advice around Front End Engineering Best Practices

SOLUTION

How did you find Skyward Digital?

Referral

Why did you select Skyward Digital over others?

High ratings, Referred to me

What was the size of Skyward Digital’s team?

2-5 Employees

What was your primary form of communication with Skyward Digital?

Virtual Meeting

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

We hired on Skyward Digital to provide ongoing leadership and design for the front end of our web-based SaaS application. Key Deliverables: - Monthly calls reviewing front end development related decisions and architecture - Delivery of design requests via Figma Files - Assistance with linking the marketing brand elements to the application brand elements.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Successful Design of UI/UX Requests

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

The project management team at Skyward Digital was able to meet me where I was at in terms of my own capability. We worked closely together via the Linear Task Management application, and commenting on Figma files. All items were delivered within requested time frames. For any item that felt out of alignment with my goals, I was able to get together a meeting to address any mismatches quickly.

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

The breadth of knowledge about the front end space, and where the community is heading overall. Additionally, they have the ability to match our own culture and energy.

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

The biggest thing I could ask for Skyward to do is to improve the overall completeness of their processes. Sometimes I want things to be more structured, but I would probably complain about them being too rigid if it were the other way.