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Software Agency for Mobile, Connected Devices, IoT

4.6
4 reviews

Tack Mobile exists to inspire companies to innovate and stand out in a mobile, IoT world. Backed by a unique balance of product vision, service design thinking, and client collaboration we commit to giving users the best possible experience.  Tack specializes in building software for connected devices - from lightbulbs and thermostats to smartphones and tablets.

We use our service design principles as a driver in all of our decisions, from comprehensive creative practices technical software architecture.  We work both lean and full-agency style in an effort to accommodate the required solution.  We are strategic thinkers, always focused on the digital landscape and the roadmap for what the years ahead may hold for our clients' products and services.

Please see our client quotes captured under MORE within our Profile Details on the left side navigation within this page.

 

 

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$75,000+
 
Undisclosed
 
10 - 49
 Founded
2011
Show all +
Denver, CO
headquarters
  • 3461 Ringsby Court, Suite 450
    Denver, CO 80216
    United States
    303-325-5300

Portfolio

Key clients: 

Amazon

Hunter Douglas

Pearson Education

Gaiam 

Tendril

MapQuest

Microsoft

CEL

Colorado Rapids

Reviews

4.6
4 reviews
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Mobile App Development for Large Design Company

"We’ve tasked them with a lot, but they’ve been thoroughly engaged, and they’re producing."

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4.5

Quality: 
4.0
Schedule: 
5.0
Cost: 
4.0
Willing to refer: 
5.0
The Project
 
Confidential
 
2013 - Ongoing
Project summary: 

Tack Mobile developed a mobile application for Android and iOS that provides smart-home capabilities for window coverings. They provided UX/UI guidance and worked to integrate the app with third-party devices.

The Reviewer
 
10,001+ Employees
 
Denver, Colorado
David Hoogstrate, Julie Berne
Engineering Manager, UX Manager; Hunter Douglas
 
Verified
The Review
Feedback summary: 

Tack Mobile has overseen several substantial product updates, which has helped increase adoption rates by third-party devices and drive sales. The team welcomes fresh ideas and collaborates well to implement them. They operate well during scope changes, ensuring a productive workflow throughout.

A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Respondent 1: I am the engineering manager in charge of the development team for an interior design company that makes and sells window fashions.

Respondent 2: I am the UX manager for our group. Much of my role consists of defining the user experience for our app. For this engagement, I act as a liaison between our development team and our associated groups, which have products within our app.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Tack Mobile?

R1: Tack Mobile serves as our mobile app vendor. We’re working in the smart-homes space, and we needed an application to handle automated processes and integrate with third-party vendors. The app provides smart-home capabilities that control window coverings.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

R1: Tack Mobile developed our app for the iOS and Android platforms. Neither of us was involved at the beginning of this collaboration, but Tack Mobile was foundational in determining how the app should work and collaborating with the engineers and product managers from our side. They have helped us evolve to provide more features, capabilities, stability, and cross-platform parity. Since the beginning, they’ve worked hand-in-hand with us to address current market trends.

R2: Early in the engagement, we relied on them to create and visualize the UX and certain UI elements. As we’ve grown, our company has brought them more UI/UX proposals so that the design and UX definition is more of a collaborative effort split between us.

What is the team composition?

R1: We work with an engagement manager, a test engineer, separate developers for Android and iOS, and a UI designer.

How did you come to work with Tack Mobile?

R1: Someone on our stakeholder team was familiar with Tack Mobile’s work, which led us in their direction.

What is the status of this engagement?

R2: Our engagement began in 2013 and remains ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

R1: The adoption of the product has continued to increase. We’ve seen the adoption rate grow from 15% after our first version to more than 20% now. The app exists strictly as an add-on for our window treatment orders, but it cannot be found in app stores. We’re seeing a fair amount of Android users, and, as a result, we see a lot of adoption with Google Assistant, which is also helping drive sales.

R2: In conjunction with the significant updates we’ve done, our reviews have increased by at least a star on average, which we attribute to Tack Mobile’s UI/UX input. The feedback we’ve received has been overwhelmingly positive. The constructive feedback we’ve received is thoughtful and has helped us drive development forward. Tack Mobile has been receptive to all feedback, and they’re willing to work with us to create the best solution.

How did Tack Mobile perform from a project management standpoint?

R1: In the last year, Tack Mobile added a QA engineer and added more automation to their processes. We’ve established a valuable rapport with their engagement manager. We have regular meetings and planning sessions. There is a productive workflow that has enabled us to make one major revision around this time last year and seven updates since then.

What did you find most impressive about them?

R1: Their consistency has been impressive. We’ve tasked them with a lot, but they’ve been thoroughly engaged, and they’re producing. We greatly appreciate their ability to adapt to all of our internal changes.

R2: I’ll add that their efforts to collaborate and be transparent have been valuable. My role didn’t exist in an official capacity until last year, but as it’s become more defined, my involvement grew significantly. Tack Mobile exhibited a great willingness to include me and my team while continuing to deliver strong work.

Are there any areas they could improve?

R1: We’ve addressed this with them to a certain extent already, but we’re working to keep the workflow consistent and ensure that we don’t introduce regressions into our processes.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

R1: Adding a UX manager helped us refine our ideas and present them to Tack Mobile in a more concrete way. It enabled us to have more back-and-forth on the UX and visual design. Further, prospective clients should have their own project management, design, and QA arms to help them onboard and deploy the work that Tack Mobile develops.

R2: It’s critical to have an understanding of your product, your strategy, and the goals of your users.

4.5
Overall Score
  • 5.0 Scheduling
    ON TIME / DEADLINES
  • 4.0 Cost
    Value / within estimates
    R1: They’re good at keeping estimates, but we haven’t looked closely at their pricing.
  • 4.0 Quality
    Service & deliverables
  • 5.0 NPS
    Willing to refer

Mobile Development for Education Company

"Tack Mobile was instrumental in building out our full mobile suite of apps across iOS and Android phones and tablets."

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5.0

Quality: 
5.0
Schedule: 
5.0
Cost: 
4.5
Willing to refer: 
5.0
The Project
 
$200,000 to $999,999
 
2012 - 2014
Project summary: 

The client was a large education company looking to create a mobile platform for learners. Tack Mobile was hired to work on these mobile apps, from creating a new brand and style guide to web and mobile development.

The Reviewer
 
1001-5000 employees
 
New York City, NY
Jeremy Rudy
Project Manager, Pearson Education
 
Verified
The Review
Feedback summary: 

The client stated that their apps were rated highly in stores, and praised Tack Mobile for their creative thinking and their innovative approaches as well as their experience in a variety of industries. Tack Mobile is highly recommended.

A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Pearson Education provides online learning platforms used by millions of students around the world, especially within the US higher education segment. The platforms are aimed at people working full time, adult learners, stay-at-home moms, and so on, looking to earn a university degree online.

I was a mobile development project manager for the company, working on higher education platforms.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Tack Mobile?

We created mobile apps for serving learners, at a time when mobile was kicking off and providing great opportunities for adults and remote students to learn on their own time. The challenge was to create the best learning experience possible for mobile devices, exploring the opportunities for the area, without simply converting what we already had available for the web. We considered how learners could take the most advantage out of their devices, in ways which couldn't be achieved on the web versions. We engaged with students and educators in order to really understand their lives, problems, and goals.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We engaged with Tack Mobile in an exploration phase, determining what the mobile segment could do for learners and what problems there were to solve. Along with this, we also considered which features should be built, as well as what brand look-and-feel we wanted to get across. Tack Mobile introduced a new type of relationship with the end-user. Our company had worked with universities, and we had been a white label brand for them in the past, but things changed when it came to mobile since we couldn't build an app for every school. There was a new type of relationship that the service needed to have with our students. Trust in our brand would be key for learners getting the best possible experience.

Working with Tack Mobile, we created a completely new brand and style guide which started with the mobile development but ended up carrying back to the web, changing the entire relationship with our learners, over the course of a 2-year period of app development.

The collaboration started small, with only 2-3 people. At one point, we were working with 7 or more full-time people from Tack Mobile. This lasted for around a year and a half, so it was definitely a large engagement. We had a very close relationship, given that our company did not have a mobile team at all when we started working with Tack Mobile. We didn't believe that we could attract the talent and skill necessary for delivering the best quality product for our customers.

How did you come to work with Tack Mobile?

I already knew Tack Mobile's founders, as well as their heads of design and development, through engaging with them at a different company. We were the first customers of Tack Mobile, just as the company got started. I knew their capabilities and how hard they could work, and we worked with Tack Mobile as the team was grown to a much larger size. I picked Tack Mobile because I knew they'd provide a fresh approach, and they understood the complex nature of our problems. We wanted a long-term engagement, not a short project. I'd worked with other companies in the past, all of them had a short-term focus.

How much have you invested with Tack Mobile?

The total cost of our work with Tack Mobile was over $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Tack Mobile in 2012 and had a full 2-year collaboration. As we continued to work with them, we slowly built up our own team, pairing them with Tack Mobile.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Tack Mobile was instrumental in building out our full mobile suite of apps across iOS and Android phones and tablets. We went through generations of app development, which involved many updates. The apps were extremely well received by our end-users, learner instructors, and institution customers. The average rating was 4.5 in app stores, which is not only high in general, but also relative to our competition in the marketplace. The apps had high results from usability and accessibility tests.

We had over a dozen supported languages from around the world, and the apps were used in 100+ countries. Around one million people used the apps every month.

What did you find most impressive about Tack Mobile?

One of Tack Mobile's greatest strengths was that they had the balance of working with a number of clients from other industries, which kept their thinking fresh and enabled the group to bring in new approaches to problems coming from healthcare, energy, or other fields. Tack Mobile took the time to deeply understand the problems associated with education. A cursory approach can not only fail to solve problems but also make them much worse.

Early on, we thought that we needed to have features which mirrored the experiences from other apps, like social media. This proved to be more distracting than it was useful. Tack Mobile's team took the time to perform user discovery surveys, have workshops with learners and educators, looking at the data, and determining what issues they were having, and how they could be better solved. This commitment to deep thinking is something which I haven't seen as much with other companies. Our work took more focus and a better process.

Are there any areas Tack Mobile could improve?

There were some growing pains while Tack Mobile's team was being built, but I always felt that any issues with individual team members were dealt with quickly, and they made sure that we were happy with the talent working for us. Nothing comes to mind around big improvement issues.

I acted as the product manager, and we also had our own project managers for the engagement with Tack Mobile. Other companies might need those functions, and they were missing on Tack Mobile's side early on. When I worked with them, Tack Mobile was more of a talent agency than a full-service one. This may have changed since that time. We got exactly what we needed, and didn't pay more than was reasonable.

5.0
Overall Score Tack Mobile provided us with strong talent which could move quickly, without a lot of onboarding and training. We got great results fast.
  • 5.0 Scheduling
    ON TIME / DEADLINES
    Due to the nature of our relationship, this question may not be fully applicable. Project management was more our responsibility than Tack Mobile's. We set user stories based on bi-weekly scrums, and Tack Mobile executed the work accordingly.
  • 4.5 Cost
    Value / within estimates
    We ultimately moved to an in-house team due to the higher cost of working with Tack Mobile, and outsourced to another company as well. Working with a team like Tack Mobile doesn't make sense for a company where cost is a concern.
  • 5.0 Quality
    Service & deliverables
  • 5.0 NPS
    Willing to refer
    I have referred them.

Mobile App Development for Navigation Company

"I went to Tack Mobile for their expertise and understanding of mobile and front-end development."

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4.0

Quality: 
4.0
Schedule: 
4.0
Cost: 
5.0
Willing to refer: 
4.0
The Project
 
Confidential
 
Dec. 2015 - Ongoing
Project summary: 

The client needed to build a mobile application and was looking for developers. Tack Mobile was hired to work on an Android and iOS application which would tie in with an existing API.

The Reviewer
 
51-200 employees
 
Denver, Colorado
Tech Manager, Navigation Company
 
Verified
The Review
Feedback summary: 

The client was pleased with Tack Mobile's work, praising their understanding of the platforms and their team-oriented collaboration abilities. The client also praised their UX [user experience] talent and would recommend them to others.

A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We provide a free online mapping service. I am a tech manager for the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Tack Mobile?

We needed to build a mobile application quickly and wanted to find developers who could work with us as a team.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Tack Mobile developed our app for Android and iOS. It ties in with an API that was already present. We didn't use Tack Mobile for design, although I know they offer the service.

How did you come to work with Tack Mobile?

One of the selling points for Tack Mobile was that I knew some of the people there. I'm actually one of the founders of Tack Mobile, but I've moved on. The ability to integrate with the team and follow our company's Scrum process was more important to us than using Tack Mobile as a headhunter for resources.

How much have you invested with Tack Mobile?

The budget was handled by the finance team.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Tack Mobile in December 2015. The app has gone through a number of pivots and iterations. We're continuing to work on it.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Tack Mobile understands well the platforms which we're working on, and they've been able to suggest solutions. I want to emphasize the team nature of the collaboration. When working with someone like Tack Mobile, I can rely on not only the individuals on my team but also on the other resources in their company, to whom they can pass questions. This has paid off and was the selling point for me.

How did Tack Mobile perform from a project management standpoint?

We've blown through a couple of deadlines because of the amount of changes which occurred. Tack Mobile performed well overall. There were some instances of team members becoming sick. I can't fault them for that, and it's simply something we needed to work around. At one point, I've had to pull one developer back from a lower priority task. They wanted it to be done, and I find the desire to improve something to be great, but it wasn't a priority at the moment. Tack Mobile offers management, but their developers are also able to think for themselves.

What did you find most impressive about Tack Mobile?

I went to Tack Mobile for their expertise and understanding of mobile and front-end development. We're not using their UI [user interface] resources and capabilities, but I know that Tack Mobile wants to build apps which users care about. They have a certain UX sensibility.

Are there any areas Tack Mobile could improve?

Tack Mobile is not extremely well set up for sitting at the client's side on a long-term basis, doing whatever they're told. Tack Mobile is more of a turnkey developer. We've pushed them beyond this for the current project, and Tack Mobile has been happy to work with us even though this approach is not how they're set up for success. This isn't necessarily something that Tack Mobile needs to improve, but it is something to consider on their end when deciding which business to take on.

Tack Mobile wants its developers happy to be working for the company. When a customer like us asked Tack Mobile's team to work from our office full-time, putting them in a position of almost being our employee, it was different than what they'd signed up for.

4.0
Overall Score
  • 4.0 Scheduling
    ON TIME / DEADLINES
    Tack Mobile didn't burn the midnight oil in order to get things done.
  • 5.0 Cost
    Value / within estimates
    I believe I still know what Tack Mobile's hourly rate is, and they provide value for cost, compared to other developers.
  • 4.0 Quality
    Service & deliverables
    Working with Tack Mobile has been valuable. Along with their strengths do come trade-offs, which required a bit of extra work on my side, but I'm okay with this.
  • 4.0 NPS
    Willing to refer
    With the already mentioned caveats.

App Development for Skiing Company

“We collaborated seamlessly.”

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5.0

Quality: 
5.0
Schedule: 
5.0
Cost: 
5.0
Willing to refer: 
5.0
The Project
 
Confidential
 
Apr. 2018 - Ongoing
Project summary: 

Tack Mobile is developing updates for a customer-facing mobile app. Their strategies aim to improve user experience through more relevant and valuable functionality.

The Reviewer
 
501-1000 Employees
 
Aspen, Colorado
Leah Swan
Senior Digital Product Manager, Aspen Skiing Company
 
Verified
The Review
Feedback summary: 

With a proactive approach, the Tack Mobile team addresses all issues as soon as they appear. Their industry knowledge and effective work ethic are two of their key strengths.

The client submitted this review online.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the senior digital product manager at Aspen Skiing Company. I oversee our mobile app, e-commerce site, and various other customer-facing digital applications.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Tack Mobile?

I needed a vendor to take over the mobile app development process.

What were your goals for this project?

I wanted to improve our guests’ experience through a mobile app.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We requested a proposal.

Describe the project in detail.

Tack Mobile is expanding on our current mobile app, increasing its relevance and use value for our guests.

What was the team composition?

They provided an engagement manager, an iOS development lead, an Android development lead, and a QA engineer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The Tack Mobile team was extremely pragmatic. They effectively troubleshot issues as they arose. We collaborated seamlessly.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

It was incredibly effective.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They’re very knowledgeable about the mobile development space.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I can’t think of anything.

5.0
Overall Score
  • 5.0 Scheduling
    ON TIME / DEADLINES
  • 5.0 Cost
    Value / within estimates
  • 5.0 Quality
    Service & deliverables
  • 5.0 NPS
    Willing to refer