Ueno

Please describe your organization.

Our company is Dropbox. We're a tech company that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, and personal cloud software. Right now, we're working on a platform that will help our users to self-serve. We want to provide them with content, forums, and platforms that can help them find answers to any questions about our products quickly.

What is your position?

I’m the Global Community Manager of Dropbox.

What business challenge were you trying to address with UENO?

We had our community platform, or the first version of our community platform, which was more of a proof of concept. We were finding many problems that we wanted to tackle, both visually and technically. We wanted help to identify and come up with visual and technical solutions for that. We partnered with UENO for that reason.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

The very first thing we wanted to do was a complete redesign of our forums, and include a couple of new features to it, while understanding what the limitations of the platform were. UENO helped us in finding out what would be possible to do and what would be required for each new feature. They help us identify aspects that would require certain workarounds, but also helped define what the ideal user interface and user journey should be. Once that was set, they helped us create the design of the forum page.

How did you come to work with UENO?

We had worked with them before on a different project. They were known internally so they were referred as the best company to work with for this specific requirement that we had. That's why we chose them.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

Including project management and design, the project cost between $40,000 and $70,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

It's completed.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

One of the main results of the redesign was a reduction of users posting new questions over and over again, rather than looking for it if it had already been posted. We wanted to focus much more on search, so you could find answers better than just posting new questions. We had a reduction of 280% on new posts. It was massively successful for us in that aspect.

How did UENO perform from a project management standpoint?

UENO was an exceptional company to work with. They were excellent in timing, keeping within budget, and responsiveness. My office is based in Dublin and their engineer was based in San Francisco, so we had the massive difference of time zones of 8 hours, but we still managed to catch up every week and kept communication going through email. Communication, delivery timing, and budget were perfect.

What distinguishes UENO from other providers?

I think UENO partnered with us because they really wanted to understand what the issue we were having was, and how they could help us. Obviously, certain companies may just give a closedown scope and that's what they should do. I think they're really interested in understanding how to get to that scope, and why we got to that scope, and help us in finding that.

We would truly consider them for future projects as well, if we have to. We understand that it is helpful for us to do this exercise with someone externally, who is not biased by working in the company, to help us in understanding a problem and how to find a solution for that.

Is there anything UENO could have improved or done differently?

Not that I can think of. I knew what I wanted and I got what I wanted. I also got extremely good insight from them. I don't think there is anything negative or anything they could have done better. For future projects, what I would like to do is get them involved even earlier in the process, so they can help out in brainstorming, and I think they're quite open for that, which is really good. I would probably involve them earlier if I could.

Please describe your organization.

My company is Reuters TV. We're a digital news service, and we deliver our news through mobile apps and TV apps.

What is your position?

I am the Managing Director of the company.

What business challenge were you trying to address with UENO?

We wanted to launch a completely new TV service. UENO is helping us with the design.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

We had to launch a new category of TV news app. Reuters TV is a personalized on-demand mobile news app. UENO worked with us to help promote the project, and continue to lead all of the UX [user experience] and UI [user interface] work on the project, as well as associated support for marketing and sales development.

We've released our product on iPad, iPhone, Apple TV, the web and on Android.

How did you come to work with UENO?

Their reputation was the main aspect that drew me to UENO. UENO’s Creative Director, Haraldur Thorleifsson, is one of the leading creative designers today, quite frankly. The team that they've established is world-class. We’ve been working with them for a number of years now and they're as good as you can get.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

The cost of the project is confidential. 

What is the status of this engagement?

It's ongoing work.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

It's been a tremendous achievement. The app has been a success with both users and commercially. We are three times up on our revenue targets, and we've doubled our user growth targets as well. Our product has been named App of the Year, and we've won half a dozen awards already.

How did UENO perform from a project management standpoint?

UENO's project management is excellent. They're really great to work with. We easily integrated with the product team. I've worked a lot with different agencies over my career; there's no one better than UENO. It's as simple as that. They're very flat-structured and very straightforward. They're incredibly responsive and an overall brilliant team.

What distinguishes UENO from other providers?

Well I think that their structure, along with the quality of their work, their creativity, and their process, makes them far better than most agencies. There's none of the nonsense, it's just all about the quality of the work. The talent they have there is degrees higher than what you'd get at any other agency.

Is there anything UENO could have improved or done differently?

No, I don't think so. It's been such a great project for us. The only thing I would say is that they've grown the range of app work they can take on and that's really exciting for us. 

Please describe your organization.

We are a publishing company.

What is your position?

I am the Product & Design lead of the company.

What business challenge were you trying to address with UENO?

I had scaled down our team and needed to bolster the remaining numbers with some external contract support, to help us get a number of features delivered in a timely manner. I reached out to UENO to provide support and serve as an extension of our team from a design perspective.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

We had done a fair amount of interaction involving design work and wireframing. UENO came in to develop the visual system that tied everything together. There are a number of features for the overall product that they worked on, and they contributed not just to the visual design, but also to the interaction design, information architecture, prototyping, etc.

How did you come to work with UENO?

I found UENO through Dribble, a design community where designers post their work.

I've worked with a lot of agencies, and for this project in particular, I was less interested in big agencies and in doing a big pitch along with a discovery session. I've become addicted to working directly with the people that are doing the work, strategic thinkers that are able to produce very high-quality work.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

The cost of the project is confidential. 

What is the status of this engagement?

While the original project is complete, the work will never be done. We’re continuing to bring UENO in when we have similar needs and they have availability.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

It’s pretty early to determine results, but early numbers would indicate that the metrics we’re interested in are tracking positively.

How did UENO perform from a project management standpoint?

Because UENO was onsite working directly with the team, the client handled project management.

What distinguishes UENO from other providers?

You could get a pretty design from many agencies. You can get deep thinking from some others, but I rarely come across a partner like UENO that is able to deliver both at such quality.

Is there anything UENO could have improved or done differently?

No.