Super User Studio

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of product management for AMT-SYBEX, a software development company. My work is focused on enterprise mobile solutions for field work management. We work with large utility infrastructure companies that have large field users and assets distributed widely across their territory. Our company provides them with software that helps them manage and execute their daily work. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Super User Studio?

We recognize many changes in the marketplace both in terms of technology and how users are redefining the way they use software products. One challenge that our customers face is executing daily work as efficiently and productively as possible. Many of them have large workforces with thousands of engineers dispersed across large territories. 

At the same time, we want to use data to make strategic decisions around predicting upcoming work of demand. Moreover, the cost of running a business is higher, so the demand for faster and more efficient use of the software is driving our approach. With these in mind, we’ve engaged Super User to help us design a product that addresses the challenges we face. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

Super User has worked on designing our products. One product was driven by geospatial mapping, while another looked at forms and scripts that end users might utilize. Strategically, we decided to bring these two products together, which entailed the design and development of a new UI for our customers. In terms of requirements, we wanted to understand how mobile field users approached their tasks; we also needed to make things simple while still giving our target users the information they needed.

Moreover, we had a user-centric approach, so most of the work that Super User did was around discovery and user interviews. This was where we needed their expertise since our organization wasn’t great at discovery. As a result, their team conducted discovery sessions and interviewed end users. This process helped us uncover the real pain points of our customers. 

We went through a series of interviews, and we then used the users' feedback to create multiple iterations of interactive wireframes. After that, our teams conducted more user interviews to validate the work we’d put together. Then, we passed the wireframes and designs over to our development team, which then started building the software. 

At present, we’re still working with Super User. Our intention has always been to transfer their design knowledge back into our team. We aim to build up design expertise and experience within our organization. So far, the team’s involvement in our ongoing projects has diminished considerably. That’s mainly because they’ve done a knowledge transfer to our own internal teams.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with a core group of 4–5 individuals, including the two founders and owners of the company. A full-time researcher is also involved in managing the research elements of the project. He’s conducted many of our early user interviews while producing prototypes and proof of concept. A UI/UX designer lays out the wireframes and works closely with us to manage design inputs. Moreover, 1–2 other people are also working behind the scenes. 

How did you come to work with Super User Studio?

Our CTO at that time had worked with Super User in another company. When we embarked on this program, we needed to bring in some external UI/UX expertise because we didn’t have it within our organization. Meanwhile, our CTO was pleased with Super User’s work in their past engagement, so he referred them to us. Our team spoke to them, and we ultimately decided to hire them for this project. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested between £350,000–£400,000 (approximately $470,000–$540,000 USD). 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started our discussions with Super User in October 2020 and formally kicked off the project in January 2021. The engagement is ongoing. 

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

The wireframes and all of Super User’s design inputs are incredibly high-quality. These deliverables have gone a long way in helping us validate our strategy and approach to end users. In other words, the quality of the product is above and beyond anything we’ve produced before. 

Moreover, our team has learned a lot from what they’ve done. We’re now doing things by ourselves, and when we share such processes with our customers, the feedback is incredibly positive. Overall, we’re on the right track in terms of understanding the key elements of a user-centric design process. The engagement has had an impactful effect on the way that we deliver software to our customers. 

How did Super User Studio perform from a project management standpoint?

Super User has a strong project management performance. We’re working with both owners of the company, and they’ve had highly specific processes in place. They manage the timeline of the project effectively. If we need to make any change or adjustment, they’ll raise that issue to us. Simply put, their process has been well-structured and organized as it aligns with our original plans. 

Moreover, we’ve also had open and frank conversations about deliverables and timelines. The results aren’t always satisfactory, but everything is always managed in a professional way. On top of that, the team is upfront and open about any changes or delays that we need to address. 

In terms of tools, we’ve used Miro boards and ActiveCollab. ActiveCollab is our main tool for sharing information. We use it to track our work and everything else. Meanwhile, we’ve used Teams for regular meetings, video calls, conversations, and updates. Our teams have also used emails to share information. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their experience, expertise, and knowledge are impressive. It’s clear since day one that this isn’t the first time Super User has run a project of this kind. They’ve done this before, even though they admittedly don’t have much experience in our particular industry. In other words, the team learns quickly, and they ask the right questions to understand our space. Overall, they conduct themselves truly professionally, and what they’ve brought to the table in terms of knowledge is hard for anyone else to match. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

As much as discovery and research were critical to everything we’re doing, we'd taken a long time to move through such processes. We spent too much time on them. We’ve lost days or weeks because of our attempts to stick to the discovery process. We could’ve made decisions to bypass certain things and move forward. If we did that, we wouldn’t have been delayed in some deliverables. 

Apart from that, Super User could also improve the overall management of costs, which have been above what we budgeted. While I perfectly understand that changes have been made throughout the engagement, the project has proven to be quite an expensive undertaking. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be open and upfront in terms of the project’s scope. Then, rely on Super User’s expertise and knowledge. At the same time, make sure that you manage the overall progression of the project with them. They have access to resources that can add a huge value to the project, but the scope needs to be focused for the project to stay on pace. On top of that, avoid navigating away from the plan unless something huge derails it. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a marketing effectiveness consultancy. We’re in the marketing analytics space, and we deliver and measure marketing performance on behalf of our clients. I’m a product owner for one of our technology solutions.

What challenge were you trying to address with Super User Studio?

We were going through an assessment of our current toolset. We realized that we needed to not only articulate and define a vision strategy for our product, but also pivot to make that product much more intuitive, scalable, and robust. 

We also needed to ensure that it met the needs of our users and that it became a usable and intuitive application that catered to our user needs and end-user experience.

What was the scope of their involvement?

During our first collaboration, we mainly engaged in a lot of what would be called business strategy and vision definition activities. Super User Studio got to understand us, and they had us articulate the product vision and strategy. 

We went through a requirements gathering session, where they tried to understand what we envisioned for the product and helped us see what the challenges were and what the vision would need to be, given some of our ambitions for what we wanted to deliver through this product. 

We then moved on to conceptualizing prototypes and design activities. We also did high-fidelity requirements definitions and prototyping. From there, we moved onto the UI design. Super User Studio then handed it over to us for the development, which was done with our internal team.

They helped with the upfront piece of the process, ensuring that we had a well-articulated product vision and that we understood the needs of our users, tying those to our product.

What is the team composition?

We worked with Stu (Founding Partner, Product Strategy & Design Director) and Odette (Managing Partner, Experience Research & Strategy) at the start. They brought in some product and graphic design resources as we were getting into design production. 

We had at least one additional person there. More recently, they’ve also brought in a project manager/business analyst to help with the articulation and clear definition of user requirements and to facilitate the design work.

How did you come to work with Super User Studio?

We made an open online search to see who the UX design players were. We were specific in wanting someone based in the UK, because that’s where our development team sits. Even though I and the product strategy team are in New York, development and tech resources all sit in our UK office. 

So, geography was one of the core considerations, along with having a UX design team that could work collaboratively and closely with our development team. We cast a wide net, but only within the UK and Europe. 

Super User Studio came up in top UX design consultancies lists in the UK. They were one of three agencies that responded to our request, and we kicked off a formal RFP process. Super User Studio was one of the more expensive companies we looked at, but we assessed them as being top-quality.

How much have you invested with them?

The engagement has cost up to $500,000 at this point.

What is the status of this engagement?

We first engaged with Super User Studio in November or December 2017. The RFP process ran from summer to fall of that year, and we selected them in late-fall. The start was more about getting to know each other, defining what we were looking to achieve, and determining how they’d be able to help us.

The official launch of the redesign was in December 2018. We did all of the design conceptualization and validation through user research, and Super User Studio facilitated all of that. We were in development during the latter half of that year.

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

We’ve licensed the product to 10 or more of our clients off the back of this redesign, and the list has continued to grow at a higher rate over the course of 2020. That probably has more to do with our sales strategy and incorporating the product inside the package of what we sell. 

The reason we’re able to do that is that we have a nicely-designed product that’s very easy to sell. That’s a result of the design work done by Super User Studio.

How did Super User Studio perform from a project management standpoint?

They were incredibly detail-oriented and had a rigorous methodology for approaching UX design. Along with that, they were just deliverable- and task-oriented. The team was really good at project execution, communicating timelines, statuses, delays, and scope creeps, and putting together a project plan and tracking against it. 

It was a really important requirement for us to make sure that we could run a well-organized project and meet pressured deliverables and timelines. We communicated at least once a week during the course of a project, depending on the phase. 

There were phases where we were in a lot of active workshops, just going through design concepts or user requirements and research, and we would talk every day during those.

What did you find most impressive about them?

It’s the rigor behind their approach. As I mentioned, they have a rigorous methodology for how they approach UX design. Our company’s building home-grown tools. The core of our business is consultancy in the marketing analytics space, and not software product development. 

Even though we’ve been developing products for 20 years, those products weren’t focused on UI/UX design, but rather the technical and functional aspects. One major contribution from Super User Studio has been training us to think about UX design properly, and enabling us to define it through a rigorous methodology that’s user-led. 

They have a framework by which they stress the importance of user testing, early prototyping, and validating concepts with end-users through user feedback and research. While doing those tasks can seem quite tedious, what comes out of it is Super User Studio making what feel like very strategic recommendations. 

We get a lot of great insights from them about what they’ve been able to gather from a set of user interviews around what they see as the main pain points and challenges of a user, and translating that into a design for our solution. 

When we were at the same user interviews listening in, Super User Studio was always able to conclude different insights and make recommendations that we wouldn’t have. That’s the real value of what they bring. 

They’re really clued in on how to translate user needs, challenges, and pain points, into a really useful UX design that’s going to address those main pain points and challenges.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’re very much in startup mode with our product, and there’s a long road ahead of us in product development. We’re three and a half years into building out this redesigned product, and, when I look at the backlog of everything we have to do, I see that we have a long road ahead of us. 

I think that we’re trying to do things very quickly, and our challenge is in trying to balance the rigor of the methodology with speed. That’s not necessarily a criticism; it’s a matter of figuring out how we can ensure that we can be really rigorous in our UX design while doing it at speed and without cutting corners or losing design quality.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

With the user-led design approach that Super User Studio takes, from the client-side, it’s a matter of ensuring that we can provide access to all the right stakeholders that need to participate. 

As the product owner, I’m not the only stakeholder that needs to interact with Super User Studio. They want to interact with actual end-users and with the business leadership in order to tie product strategy to business strategy, and product vision to business long-term vision. 

My advice is for clients to make sure they can coordinate that process and provide the appropriate access to Super User Studio.  

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of PES. We’re a small technology business in the UK focused on creating a range of services and solutions for employers to create a fantastic employee experience.

What challenge were you trying to address with Super User Studio?

My company wanted to improve existing technologies and provide the best experience for employees. Our primary focus had been employee benefits, but we hoped to move into other areas that are relevant to employees, such as communication and financial well-being. We needed a vendor with expertise in the wholesale UX and UI space.

What was the scope of their involvement?

First, we focused on improving the user experience. Super User Studio did an extensive review of the technologies we had in place. They also spoke with customers and internal stakeholders and looked at industry practices. Super User Studio delivered a report with focus areas and suggested improvements.

Then, we shifted our attention to future technologies. Super User Studio led workshops to help us develop our ideas into working prototypes. They tested some of our ideas with clients and created a list of working prospects that we could show to investors.

Now, Super User Studio is working on building a new frontend. They’ve created designs and assets.  

What is the team composition?

We work directly with two people, but more team members are working behind the scenes.

How did you come to work with Super User Studio?

We found 3–4 vendors in the local marketplace. When one of those vendors didn’t have the capacity to take on our work, they recommended Super User Studio. We ultimately chose them because they’d worked with one of our competitors before, which meant they already understood our market and what we did. Their knowledge and insights were a big plus to us.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent £75,000– £100,000 (approximately $95,300–$127,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement began in June 2017, and the work is ongoing.

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

We haven’t launched our new platform yet, so that impact is yet to come. However, we’ve secured some investors as a result of the work Super User Studio has done for us. My company has also been invited to pitch for a couple of large projects. Winning these pitches would be transformational for us, and we wouldn’t have these opportunities without Super User Studio’s help.  

How did Super User Studio perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management has been excellent. I know they use a project management tool, but I primarily communicate with them via emails, phone calls, and meetings. During the peak of our work together, we spoke every day. Now, we communicate every couple of weeks.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Super User Studio feels like an extension of our team. They’re professional while also being approachable and friendly. They propose fantastic ideas and are incredibly knowledgeable. The team always fulfills requirements on time and on budget.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The only slight challenge is that they’re still a relatively small business, so they’re navigating how to handle multiple projects and clients. Once or twice, they haven’t been available when we’ve needed them; this has never been a major issue, but I suppose it could become one down the line if we continue working together.

Any advice for potential customers?

To get the most out of the engagement, embrace Super User Studio’s style and view them as an extension of your team. If you do that, you’ll get huge value for your money.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

dunnhumby is a global data science platform for enterprise-sized retailers. We help clients turn their transaction and customer data into insights and, subsequently, products. In my role, I lead our venture capital group and have also acted as the interim head of UX.

What challenge were you trying to address with Super User Studio?

We’ve been going through a transformation over the last two years as we’ve pivoted away from consulting work into more of a software business. However, we had a small UX team that wasn’t as familiar with more modern practices. As a result, our software products weren’t as user-friendly as we would’ve hoped. Super User Studio leveraged their expertise to help us formalize our UX design processes and identify a new UX head to take over our team.

What was the scope of their involvement?

When we first engaged them, we were in the process of merging a few different UX teams. We held a three-day workshop and invited Super User Studio as a third-party observer to ensure that the sessions stayed on track. They brought their expertise to the table, discussing what worked well in the market for their past clients and helping us formalize new internal processes.

We engaged them again to help conceptualize a new UI for one of our core products. For the most part, it was a thought exercise to help stretch our own approach and expand the boundaries of what we knew to be possible. Their method would inform our strategy as we update our style guide and define a new UI.

Recently, Super User Studio supported us as we hired our first global head of UX. By that point, they’d already spent a fair amount of time with our team and had a sense of our future goals. They provided a set of recommendations for optimum team structure, gave insights into best practices, and helped us interview and identify our new head of UX.

What is the team composition?

We worked with two points of contact.

How did you come to work with Super User Studio?

Our new chief product officer had worked closely with them in the past and recommended them to me. After evaluating them, I felt comfortable moving forward with the project.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent roughly £15,000 (approximately $19,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

Their work lasted from June–September 2018. They completed the workshop in a few days, whereas the UI exercise took about three weeks. Selecting the new head of UI involved around a week’s worth of work, including the interviews.

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

Since their initial involvement in the workshops, the quality of the output from our UX team has increased remarkably. The teams came together well and formed a strong internal process. Super User Studio was also invaluable in identifying a new global head of UX who could lead our team.

How did Super User Studio perform from a project management standpoint?

They always delivered on time and remained realistic about what they could achieve. At times, we wanted to squeeze more into the project, but they advised against it because they didn’t think it was the right approach. It’s a level of honesty that I definitely appreciate. In terms of communication, we would touch base as often as necessary depending on the project. Though they had several other ongoing projects, they consistently made sure to be available when we needed them.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They had a wealth of experience working with enterprise-sized product companies, which they leveraged to identify best practices. Their knowledge played a crucial role in informing how we would organize our own UX team.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Because they’re a smaller team, they’re able to have an involved, personal approach to projects. However, this can also result in bandwidth challenges when they’re in high demand. There were a few times when we’d hoped that they could do something on a short time frame, but they just didn’t have the manpower.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Rather than coming into a project with a predefined mindset, work with them to identify an approach to the problem. Clients often want to rush UX projects based on their desired final outcome. But it’s worth it to talk to Super User Studio and let them guide the process.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I was a product manager at Channel 4. At the time, I was working on the Film4 proposition, on the digital side.

What challenge were you trying to address with Super User Studio?

We had a website already, which didn’t necessarily reflect all the different parts of our business. At Channel 4, we had a channel, but also a production company that makes films, and the site had reviews as well. None of them were really working together, as they had different objectives. We wanted to bring someone in who could facilitate that a little bit, but also to talk to our users, run user experience, help with strategy, do competitor reviews, and then go on to do the design and UX for the site.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had an initial six-to-eight-week exploration period with the goal of coming out with the objectives we wanted to achieve. Within that, we talked to users for our survey, which was put together with Super User Studio. We also did some focus groups, which they ran at their offices. They built a prototype as well, based on some of the feedback we were getting. I think we did two rounds of talking to the focus groups. We went back with something to show them the second time. In that phase, they also did a full competitor review, which was presented back to us. They were very involved in all the stakeholder meetings I had, often helping with facilitation.

They did work on personas as well. I think we already had personas at Channel 4, but we didn’t have any that were specific to film. Super User helped us to define three key personas for us. Once that was done, they went on to looking at concept designs, once we knew what the site was going to be. That was run in quite a waterfall way, because we had to get a lot of buy-in across different stakeholders to get to the branding, which is very sensitive and important. That was the next process we went through, and we got to the point where we agreed on a high-level concept.

Then it was very much about working on the design and UX in much more detail, going down to wireframes, and then eventually designs as well. That process probably took a couple months, and they worked with our internal tech team. We mainly focused on the website, but we were looking at a responsive design that would work across anything. It needed to look good on mobile and iPad as well.

How did you come to work with Super User Studio?

We did a proper request for proposals. I think there were four companies. I don’t know how we initially found them. We went sent out a brief, and they had to come in and present to us. We were just really impressed with them.

How much have you invested with Super User Studio?

I know it started off at about $60,000 for the initial stuff, and then the larger piece of work was about $120,000. The total might have been somewhere in the $200,000-250,000 range, but I’m not 100% sure. 

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started in August of 2011. The main website they were working on went live in November of 2012, but they continued to work with us. Following the launch, we did some testing, and then we did a few more sprints in 2013 for improvements. I think we did some multivariate testing with them as well. I think the last paid work they did with us was in 2013, but I kept in contact with them after that.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

Our site was nominated for a Broadcast Digital Award. We increased repeat visits, and there was definitely a positive uplift in engagement. I don’t know if we grew the user base particularly because it’s quite a specific group of people who are interested in film.

There was a lot of feedback from the users at the time over Twitter. We had quite vocal users of the site, and people are very passionate about film. They really liked the site. A lot of people said it was nice. Internally, people were very happy with it. The fact that people didn’t want to change it, to a certain extent, showed how happy they were with the design. It still looked modern for a long time. Things can change quite quickly, but the site kept its ground for a long time, which was good.

How did Super User Studio perform from a project management standpoint?

They were always on time. Sometimes with agencies, you feel they’re struggling at the last minute and trying to get extra time. Super User Studio was always very organized. I always had complete trust in their timelines. I knew they would never sign up to anything they couldn’t achieve. When they did need to put in extra work, they always did, so I was really happy. They were quite good at knowing what the steps should be and how to manage us to help with that as well.

What did you find most impressive about Super User Studio?

They’re really nice people, and I really got on with them. I thought they were very personable. Also, they are quite experienced. There are a lot of agencies where people are in their early twenties, and that’s completely useful for other things as well. Super User has been in the TV industry before, they’ve been in this industry a long time, and they had really good knowledge, experience, and things they could teach us. I think that was very good. They were just quite strategic. They covered design, UX, and a little bit of business strategy as well. They’re a small agency, but they knew their stuff. They could cover quite a lot of bases and roles within what they did. They were also very good at presenting and facilitating meetings with lots of stakeholders, which can sometimes be quite difficult.

Are there any areas Super User Studio could improve?

Not really. I was always very happy with them. I personally didn’t have any problems at all. I think they were great.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Vuelio is a software-as-a-service company. They provide software to the PR community and the corporate communications community. People use it for managing their interactions with the media. Part of what the system supplies is a media database based in the UK, and there’s an option to buy an international database, and also media monitoring services. I was the head of IT when I worked at the company. I covered all of product development.

What challenge were you trying to address with Super User Studio?

We were in the process of merging three companies together. One of the things we needed to work on was the user experience of the user interface. We also wanted to relaunch the company following the acquisition and the merger. We needed a facelift to the product.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The timeline was aggressive. The focus was around the user interface, the design, and the aesthetics. Super User Studio laid out a program of work that started off with an analysis of the current system and compared it to other competitor products. Then they proposed two different approaches to concepts for the new look and feel. We favored one of them but we asked them to incorporate some of the elements of the other one and Super User Studio came up with the final design concept that was adopted. From that, they produced the digital assets. They didn’t do the development work because we had people who could do the HTML work and put it into the actual product. They produced the icons and the overall design concepts and the PSDs. They looked at the landing page which has the navigation elements. The site is a series of modules but a lot of the modules are similar in look and feel in that they have a search message, filtering, you can see a record, you can search a number, you’ve got a data entity form. We didn’t need them to do every single module in the system. We just picked a couple of the modules. They looked at the overall framework as well and how that was laid out. They moved the whole menu navigation from the left-hand side to the top. I worked mainly with Stewart, but he had a couple of people working with him.

How did you come to work with Super User Studio?

We did our own research in the market through Google. I think we went through one round and we didn’t find anybody suitable. And then we reached out to about three or four others. Some of the firms struggled to quote for the work because they thought we hadn’t gotten the project laid out in terms of what our requirements were. Super User Studio was able to work with a lower level of direction initially and put together a reasonable proposal in terms of both their portfolio and how they intend to service our needs.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in January 2016 and was completed in May 2016.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

I don’t know any of the metrics. The implementation and release came after I left the company.

How did Super User Studio perform from a project management standpoint?

They work in tandem and they were very attentive. They always made themselves available to come into the office, or available for a Skype call to go through progress and to check where we are and validate the work. I was happy with that. We used Basecamp for project management.

What did you find most impressive about Super User Studio?

I haven’t worked with many other providers in that space. They’re reasonably small which means they can give a very personal touch to the work. They were able to get a good understanding of what we needed rather than just giving us a formulaic approach. They were able to tailor their expertise quite well to the situation.

Are there any areas Super User Studio could improve?

There were more issues on our side than theirs.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Questback provides feedback platforms for large enterprises. We gather feedback from employees and customers of companies and generate insight from that, so that they can take action to improve their business. I’m the global director of business solutions.

What challenge were you trying to address with Super User Studio?

They worked on two different UX projects for the two previous companies I worked with.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The first time I used Super User Studio was eight years ago. The company I worked for at that time was called Thomsons Online Benefits. We provided financial products to employees in the workplace like private medical insurance and childcare vouchers. The issue that we had was that lots of the employees of our customers were just not completing their sign-up registration journeys. They were logging into the system and were being asked to make choices around how much money they wanted to put into their pension or their 401(k). They didn’t have information at their fingertips to do it, and they’d have to wait until they got home. That sort of broke the journey, and the number of incomplete journeys was around 80%. I brought Super User Studio in not just to change the user interface, but have them think about the whole journey and help employees through every step of that journey. Super User Studio was able to accomplish that goal and, as a result, the number of dropouts went down to 20% or 30%, so the improvement was dramatic. The project lasted two years.

The second time I used them was with a company called SHL that provides workplace assessments for companies that are recruiting new staff to ensure they were hiring the right people with the right skills, background and future capabilities. It was also a way of gauging how to help current employees develop as individuals and leaders. We were finding that you get the best benefit from using a system like that if sit down and start the journey and complete it, end to end. We were finding that people were getting stuck halfway along the journey. Once they stopped the journey, they had to restart. Once we’d collected all of the data, we needed to share it with different senior individuals inside the business, whether that was inside the human resources function or the finance function or even up at the board level, where they wanted to see the metrics and the outcomes of all of this data. They could see what sort of people they were hiring, how long they were staying, and what kind of improvements they could make. The other part of the work that Super User Studio did was not only to connect the employee journey, but also to visualize the data that was collected in such a way that directors could immediately understand where there was an issue and navigate to the root of the problem.

For both of these previous companies, we had in-house developers. Super User started even before the wireframing because they ran focus groups with employees and customers to try to understand the journeys and concerns they had. They would then wireframe them up. One of the things that helped a lot was that they would prototype the wireframes and populate them with some data. We were able to give the sales guys clickable demos on the system. In the background, the development teams were building it on the system for real.

How did you come to work with Super User Studio?

The first time I used them, we published an invitation and there were seven or eight respondents. I shortlisted the list to three and then took an active part in having them come in and do demos. They could explain what they could do, have a look at our requirements, and explain how they might go about that. And because it was an area for which I was directly responsible, it was me that made the choice to bring Super User in on that particular one. When I moved to SHL, it was another part of the business that I could see needed some help with their user experience and their user journey, so I recommended Super User Studio. At SHL, they also had other bids and Super User won it. Having my recommendation certainly helped to get them onto the short list in the first place.

How much have you invested with Super User Studio?

The cost for both projects was between 100,000 and 200,000 pounds ($129,000 - $257,000).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them at Thomsons in 2009 and they continue to work with Super User even though I left in 2011. The project at SHL lasted 18 months from 2013 to 2015.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

With Thomsons, the number of employees that were dropping out of the journey before Super User’s work was 84%. After their work was completed, that dropped to 37%. That was a 57% improvement of people actually getting through and completing the journey. That also had an impact in that we were getting far fewer calls into our contact center because the journey became intuitive. If anybody got stuck, they got help right away, from logging on and lost passwords, all the way to the submit button at the end. We saved the equivalent of two full-time employees in the contact center.

The first time Super User came in to demonstrate the new user experience, I had the sales director in the room to have a look, and he actually never got to the end of the meeting. He wanted to leave the meeting to tell people about it right away. For me, in many respects, that was almost the best result, having the director running out of the room halfway through the demo. It’s a great anecdote, and it just shows how, in an instant, it made a difference. It was about six months before the competition started to wake up to what had happened. It felt like we were closing more deals in the following six months until the competition thought about what they were doing. It certainly gave us some competitive advantage in the market.

How did Super User Studio perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re great. There are two parts to it. One is, they’re very clear in terms of statement of work roles, responsibilities, and deliverables from the beginning of the project. They’re very flexible. The nature of these projects has an element of discovery. They prototype things, and they’ll try them out with customer focus groups. They showed those to us and we give them feedback. They were also good about sharing their suggestions in ways that were creative. They had good control over the timelines and deliverables and were flexible along the way in order to meet my expectations.

What did you find most impressive about Super User Studio?

The reason I chose them in the first place is because they actually challenged my thinking. We had a fairly linear user experience. It felt a little bit like you were filling in a 20-page form. And actually what I was expecting, and what the other two shortlisted bidders provided, was a way of making that it all appear a little bit slicker and a little bit nicer, whereas what Super User did was provide an engaging user journey. They thought about how the user would use it and what would encourage them to move from one step to the other, and where they might need help, and how we can build knowledge into the workflow to help them to complete that. They’re challenging on the one hand, and they’re very user-centric on the other. They tie those two things together to help the user get through the journey. Our company received a benefit from their work.

Are there any areas Super User Studio could improve?

Nothing comes to mind. They’re challenging, and they’re flexible. Both projects were successful.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a Product Manager for Thomsons Online Benefits, which is predominantly a software company. We produce software solutions for global corporate clients in the employee benefits market. We provide administrative capabilities for managing benefits. Employees can access our portal when researching the benefits a company may offer and making choices from the benefits available to them.

What challenge were you trying to address with Super User Studio?

We wanted a fundamental redesign of our user experience. Up to that point, we didn’t have any UX [user experience] design involvement in our software; it had just evolved from internal development expertise. We decided we needed to bring in experts.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We wanted to create a whole new frontend for the software. Super User Studio helped us through every aspect of the redesign process. They worked on persona development, wireframing, and user interaction flows. Since the first redesign project, we’ve also used them for smaller projects here and there.

Recently, they’ve completed another redesign of the software. This project involved a bit of wireframing, but it was a lot more heavily focused on UI [user interface]. Our goal was to achieve something that is responsive and a market-leading user experience. We asked them to do an independent market analysis to assess what our design approach should be from an UI perspective. The review included our specific market and similar types of software applications in the more general market. They gave us a holistic feel for the direction we should take. They then took that to the next step, formulating a design language for the whole application. They worked together with the internal UX team we've hired since to hand everything back over to us. They’ve really helped us through two complete evolutions of our frontend.

How did you come to work with Super User Studio?

Their name came up when we searched for consultancies covering London. We went through a short tender process with several companies, and Super User Studio stood out as being very capable. They took the time to understand our industry in ways we didn’t see from the other firms. They also presented prototype designs that really resonated with us. Most importantly, we felt that they bonded with us in that process. I came away with a sense of comfort. They demonstrated that they could manage the project and stick to deadlines.

How much have you invested with Super User Studio?

We’ve spent between £50,000 and £100,000 a year over the course of our six-year relationship.

What is the status of this engagement?

We first engaged with them around November of 2011, and the relationship is ongoing. The most recent project was completed about three months ago. Now, we’re looking at ways they can help us extend the capacity we’ve got right now.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

The work they’ve done has primarily been around our employee-facing frontend, so we look at engagement statistics. We’ve got evidence more that employees are completing our key user journeys as a result of the changes they've suggested. We’re delighted with their work.

How did Super User Studio perform from a project management standpoint?

Although they’re not local to us, that has never been an issue. We’ve used a variety of tools with them. They’ve used Basecamp, which has worked fairly well. They’ve also used Zeplin quite heavily as a distribution tool for working designs. We’ve used Trello at certain points to help with prioritization and Excel to manage project timeframes. They have always been outstanding at holding to deadlines they've set; these only ever change when we change the scope and that's clearly communicated.

What did you find most impressive about Super User Studio?

They have a bit of a niche in the enterprise business software market, particularly in SaaS [Software-as-a-service]. What we’re delivering is very much B2B, and that is where we see their strength. They have the ability to understand highly technical requirements, and they’re able to convert that into a simple user experience. That’s really the heart of our business, and that skill is not one that you find in any UX team. They take the time to really understand our business, and they work particularly well in that HR-centered market.

Are there any areas Super User Studio could improve?

Sometimes, they focus too much on exploring a particular avenue when it’s not something we think we might get around to delivering.That said we always welcome their creative thinking around alternative approaches. We’ve learned to manage this on both sides of the fence. Being absolutely clear on the scope would have helped at times.