UX Connections

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for a different company now, but I was a digital project director at a global agency when I partnered with UX Connections.

What challenge were you trying to address with UX Connections?

We needed them to design our platform’s UX.

What was the scope of their involvement?

UX Connections’ work centered on designing the frontend architecture of our platform and structuring the content that we intended to place there. Upon accomplishing this with their team, we hired another team to develop the website for us.

What is the team composition?

Chris (Founder & Managing Director) was my main point of contact. We also worked with Rebecca (UX Consultant), Johnny (Company Director), Ali (UX Designer), and Felipe (UX Consultant).

How did you come to work with UX Connections?

I personally knew Chris, so by the time he told me about his company, I was just prepared to try their services for myself.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around £100,000 (approximately $138,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

The project ran from November 2018–April 2019.

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

The project was very successful. I didn’t really focus on any other metric except for client satisfaction — our clients were exceptionally happy with UX Connections’ work.

How did UX Connections perform from a project management standpoint?

UX Connections was excellent in project management. They were a very easy team to work with — we were able to rely on them to do what needed to be done.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We were highly impressed with their capacity to address all our problems concerning our website. UX Connections acknowledged the fact that there was no cookie-cutter approach to anything, so they always utilized appropriate resources and assets to work on different tasks or issues.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could work on refining the skills of their resources. There was a time in the engagement when one of their members didn’t meet our expectations that their own team set through their previous, excellent work.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Try focusing more on presenting the problems that you want their team to solve rather than prejudging the situation.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I worked at an event and digital company, and we built digital technology solutions in the financial services sector. We also put on real-world events such as annual conferences. 

What challenge were you trying to address with UX Connections?

We had an engagement with a bank, and we were trying to build an app that had a complicated UX. We had a digital development team, but it was very light on UX. During our initial inquiry with the banking organization, they gave us a very high-level brief of the project. We also had a couple of conversations with them about what the application might be. 

However, it became obvious that we needed to gather more information if we wanted to give them a complete pitch, an appropriate cost estimate, and an accurate description of what the system would be. As a result, we had to get some UX specialists for the design that the application would need. We didn’t have the depth of knowledge that we wanted UX Connections to bring, so we hired them. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

We engaged UX Connections at the pitch level. The deliverable was primarily a desktop app that would be used by the bank’s client services team. It also had mobile functions. Basically, users would use the desktop and mobile app as a booking engine, and the bank’s internal team would use the desktop version to service those users.

During the engagement, we had 2–3 all-day workshop sessions with the bank. We also had internal discussions before UX Connections went away, at which time they provided us with documentation. There was probably 6–8 days’ worth of work involved over the course of this process. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with a total of three people from UX Connections, including Chris (Founder & Managing Director) and Hayley (UX Consultant), who were the two main people that I dealt with. 

How did you come to work with UX Connections?

I knew Chris from a previous job at an organization where we worked together. I was relatively close to him when he set up UX Connections, but it wasn’t actually my decision to use them at that time. 

It was my boss who asked me for recommendations since I’d worked with a number of other UX consultancies over the course of my career. We talked to Chris about what the project involved, and he gave us some good ideas. He seemed to understand the system that we were trying to build. That was how we picked him for this project. 

How much have you invested with them?

We invested around $10,000–$25,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

The project lasted from June–July 2015. It ran from 2–3 weeks, and we didn’t actually end up building the actual application because certain things got in the way. As a result, we ended the engagement at the pitch-response stage. 

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

We measured the success of the workshops in terms of the third-party client’s engagement in the discussion. We checked whether they found those days useful or if the sessions helped them organize their thoughts about what the application might be or what problem they were solving. We also checked the quality of the documentation that was provided back to us. 

Overall, success depended on how impressed the third-party client and my team were in terms of the return documentation that UX Connections provided. 

How did UX Connections perform from a project management standpoint?

UX Connections was absolutely spot-on. They were on top of any deadlines that we set, including those for documentation delivery and responses. Chris was very communicative, so we didn’t have any issues with them at all. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The application was a specialist-type technology, and UX Connections was quite quick to pick it up. We had a preparation meeting with them before they met the third-party client. Even in those discussions, they understood exactly what we were trying to build and its implications for the UX design. They also knew how to address those implications and what they would need to gather necessary requirements — they totally understood the project from the offset. 

I’ve worked with other UX organizations over the course of my career, and I’ve always worried that people haven’t understood the problem or haven’t realized what the application is for. As a result, they usually set off on the wrong foot or with a slight misunderstanding. By contrast, Chris and Hayley managed to understand our project straight away.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there weren’t any. I wouldn’t have much comment on that. We were immensely pleased with the work they did. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be prepared to play your part in the relationship. This is important because UX Connections team members aren’t magicians; they don’t invent things out of thin air. They still require you to have a role to play. 

The team needs your input, so be prepared and make yourself available. Work alongside them to get the best results out of what you’re going to pay them to produce on your behalf. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of a veterinary company.

What challenge were you trying to address with UX Connections?

We needed a partner to create UI/UX designs for our new app that we sought to publish on the app stores.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had discussions and meetings with UX connections to help their team understand our vision for the app. During the meetings, we discussed how to best create the flows in the app. UX Connections did all the designs, sketching the screens, the buttons, and the flows between screens. They designed the app’s UI/UX, which helped the development company building the app. The app’s for Android and iOS.

What is the team composition?

We've worked with three people from UX Connections on this project. Two people from their team worked on the UX and another person worked on the UI for the app.

How did you come to work with UX Connections?

We shortlisted three companies, and UX Connections had a friendly approach. They showed us their previous work, and we liked it. The company we hired to develop the app also recommended them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in August 2020 and contracted a number of more days with UX connections because the app’s still in development.

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

We’re happy with the quality of their work. UX Connections provides excellent designs.

How did UX Connections perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicate via Zoom and emails. There's Google Chat too. During the bulk of the project, we chatted there a lot. Their team was highly involved when we had deadlines to meet.

What did you find most impressive about them?

UX Connections is highly competent. They understood our needs and translated them into the app. We definitely made the right decision by engaging with them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’re less responsive now because their team’s no longer full-time on the project.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Engage them early in the project to complete the UI/UX designs before starting development. I wish we had engaged them earlier in the project. We hired a bunch of developers but there was a missing element that became apparent when UX Connections came on board.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I worked with the UX Connections team while I was a Product Manager for a Media/Publishing organisation. The organisation specialises in a plethora of publications including entertainment, food, sports among others. We worked closely for over 6 months.

For what projects/services did your company hire UX Connections?

The team became an extension of our internal UX and Design department, supporting existing projects as well as new initiatives and strengthening the processes followed throughout the different functions.

What were your goals for this project?

For the particular project, the aim was to validate a new proposition offering our customers personalised recommendations through testing in person as well as via a working prototype/mobile app.

How did you select UX Connections?

Our existing UX and design team identified the UX connections team.

Describe the project in detail.

The UX connections team was an integral part of the project and the process we followed. The team helped us go through a short user research phase to then quickly come up with some ideas to validate with a selected pool of users.

I worked closely with one of the consultants, Becky, who led a set of in-person interviews and also diary studies. From the feedback we received and throughout the MVP development we created an aspirational roadmap and made changes and iterations based on internal and user feedback.

Our MVP then launched to a bigger pool of users and was tested in a live environment for two months.

What was the team composition?

We worked closely with two UX consultants for about 6 months

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

The UX Connections team worked with us across a few months and from day 1 they engaged with the company and culture as a part of the team

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Again, since the team joined as an addition to our existing team, the project management aspect doesn't necessarily apply to our setup. We worked together closely on a daily basis and this helped massively in setting expectations straight.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The team is always trying to follow a "customer first approach" which I find very important especially when trying to validate new ideas, improve products etc. Everyone was very skilled and were experiences in multiple techniques and best UX practices, from user testing and interviewing to running meaningful workshops that help promote and develop ideas.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Not that I could think off. The project we worked on didn't actually go live but the learnings and ways of working were valuable for the internal team and myself personally. I would recommend the team and would be happy to work with them again.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the COO of a sports integrity monitoring company. We work in the sports wagering ecosystem and we provide reporting and transparency to collegiate conferences, sportsbook operators, professional sports leagues, and regulators. We basically identify abnormalities and other irregularities that might be occurring in the sports betting space.

What challenge were you trying to address with UX Connections?

Our web app’s dashboard needed a refresh and a facelift, so they were brought on and engaged to do a new UX/UI design for our platform, as well as find a developer who can help us in implementing their wireframes.

What was the scope of their involvement?

There were four phases that cover the majority of the services that UX Connections was engaged for. The first phase was customer discovery. They interviewed some of our clients and partners, and created sample user profiles — the goal was to identify the matrix of gaps, areas for improvement, certain key items, and which elements we considered to be very important and which we didn’t. 

The second stage was where they began to actually create a design template for UX, which they iterated based on our comments and feedback — this included the overall look of the dashboard and the different pages within the platform. The next phase was UI, which is where they incorporated certain color schemes, icons, and buttons. They presented us with various options for wireframes with different color schemes, which we chose from.

The final and current phase is working with a developer and our CTO to help craft the style guide and making sure that it's completely ready to be incorporated as efficiently as possible. 

The UX/UI work is done, and we’re now in the technical integration phase, which isn't being done by UX Connection — they contracted a developer to assist us with this. They're basically finished with the design phase, but we are still technically engaged with them as the developer is part of their invoice. 

The whole process was very collaborative — we worked with them to figure out the colors, as well as the overall look and feel of it because we had no idea what we wanted or what to do. We usually had a handful of options to choose from which were based on our previous input, as well as their own suggestions. 

What is the team composition?

I worked primarily with Chris (Founder & Managing Director), who oversaw the entire project, and Lauren (UX Consultant), who was our main point of contact and worked on the UX design. I also worked with Mae (UX Consultant), who came in a bit later in the process and worked on the UI with Lauren overseeing. Finally, we have a developer who they engaged on our behalf.

How did you come to work with UX Connections?

We were looking for referrals in the UX/UI space, particularly ones who’ve had experience with sports gambling companies in the past. We’d been referred to one company, but I wanted to interview at least one other company so I just did a quick Google search for UX/UI design firms. 

I then found UX Connections who had sports gambling experience on their portfolio and testimonials. I gave them a call and they put together a comprehensive proposal that was good-looking and reasonable. After a couple of conversations, we decided to go with them. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $48,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We mainly worked together from December 2020–February 2021. We are now only working primarily with the third-party developer.

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

From my perspective, the project went well and the quality of their work was top-notch and well-designed. They were extremely professional and they delivered things in a timely manner. This is the first time I've ever engaged and oversaw a UX/UI design process from start to finish, so I don’t really have a metric. 

They got everything that we were going for without needing us to guide them throughout, which was a concern of mine. Overall, they did a great job and exceeded my expectations, and I’m really happy with the work that they did.

How did UX Connections perform from a project management standpoint?

Scheduling was a little difficult because they were based in the UK, I'm based in New York, and then the rest of my team is based in Las Vegas — there were three very distinct time zones, so there was a very specific time that worked for each party. That added a level of difficulty because we had to schedule things in advance. It also wasn't always clear who was going to be scheduling things, whether it was going to be me or them to reach out regarding our next catch-up. 

The process also wasn’t all that clear sometimes about whether it was time to discuss or move onto the next steps. At some point, my team would ask me about the next stage and when the next meeting would be, and I didn’t always have an answer for them. I was a little busy, so I might have missed some of their documentation that had the schedule in it.

There were some areas for improvement when it came to scheduling, but that was the least of my concerns, so overall, I’d say their project management was good enough.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I felt that they took a really nuanced topic, like sports wagering in the US, and did a really good job of identifying and highlighting the key areas. They didn't really require a lot of handholding — I was expecting to have to walk them through everything a million times because it was such a new space here in the US. 

We were also providing a pretty unique product and our customers were leveraging it for different purposes and reasons. All of that combined might seem really complicated, so I was concerned that they were going to constantly need me to guide them, but they handled it on their own which was convenient — this was a team who came in, took the bull by the horns, and put their own stamp on the design. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s always something to improve upon. In their case, the project would have benefitted from UX Connections having an executive assistant who handled the scheduling and sending out placeholders, and possibly sending out deliverables further in advance of meetings. 

For our particular circumstance, I was much more concerned with them completing work in a timely fashion and not needing my attention on it. I didn't care as much about the timetables, but if I was looking for something that they could have improved upon, it would be having an assistant be a little more on top of arranging the meetings.

They could’ve done it before the project even started by putting a placeholder on everybody's calendar for the next six weeks so that we didn't have to keep going back and forth on figuring out what the best time would be and what we would be discussing.  

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

As much as possible, do customer due diligence (CDD) and collect several user-profiles and general product write-ups in advance —  it'll save you some work in the long term because they need to have that information before they spend time on UX/UI and it would be beneficial for everyone. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for a management consulting firm and we’re made up of about 3000 people globally. We operate in the mid-tier market, and we cater predominantly to Fortune 500 clients across customer workforce and operation transformation. I lead our strategy and experience client practice in the UK, and I mainly focus on customer experience, transformation, and experience service design.

What challenge were you trying to address with UX Connections?

We needed UX Connections specifically for UX design and direct support on a broader piece of client work. We had white labels come through to our clients, so we needed their skills in-house to provide them the capabilities and achieve success.

What was the scope of their involvement?

UX Connections helped us redesign the UX of an internal tool for one of our clients, a major grocery chain in the UK. we brought in our service design expertise for this project, to create an end-to-end colleague experience and the service within.

We were doing specific recommendations and design changes to the tool, that the consultants of UX Connections helped us identify. This involved wireframing and paper-based prototyping. The wireframes weren’t designed to align to a specific code, given that they’re just wireframes to support a prototype. The outputs were done using Sketch.

We placed one of their teams directly into our engagement team. We white-labeled that person through our business, so they could serve our clients as an employee from our firm.

What is the team composition?

We had one person who was on a full-time engagement with us, and an engagement manager who works as a senior consultant in their business. They provided us with QA on the visual design components.

How did you come to work with UX Connections?

They actually came recommended by a former colleague of mine, who worked with them a number of times.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project lasted from September–November 2020.

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

Just last week, our client was moving this trajectory to the next phase, and were talking about the foundation that we’ve given them. More specifically, the model for how they wanted to think about their problems more broadly as a design team. That speaks to the level of quality of the visual design and prototyping work from the team.

They were initially cautious to not own this kind of prototyping space themselves — they were pretty hands-off. We led most of the project as a consulting engagement rather than a joint engagement, which we don’t normally do with this client.

How did UX Connections perform from a project management standpoint?

The person that they had working for us full-time, acclimated quickly to our business — they felt more like a natural member of the team. Their ways of working and our ways of working naturally fit together. Their senior leadership team also had the right level of concern on how they engaged with my senior leadership team.

Given that it was the first project that we’ve done together and how they knew it was important for our client, they were really diligent in their supported engagement around the work.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We were impressed by two things. The quality of their design output is really high, and the speed at which the white-labeled member was able to naturally acclimate into our team. They were able to embed with us so that it wasn’t apparent to our clients that they weren’t a long-standing member of our business. That’s really impressive to do quickly.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There was nothing they could’ve done differently to make the output more impactful and compelling. I feel like I got everything I needed from them and probably a bit more. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My counsel is to just trust them to deliver quality work because they really know their craft.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a hospitality technology provider that mainly focuses on hotel clients, from small hotels to big hotel chains. We provide technology services across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, along with a bit of Asia.

Historically, we were founded in Sweden and provided services to hotels including irons, safes, etc. Moving into the technology era, our founder acquired a number of other companies and formed a global group with dedicated R&D teams. Now, our different services include connected televisions, mobile key locks, seamless lock systems, and property management solutions.

I work in the R&D department as head of data. Our segment handles everything in relation to data, including pushing between products on-site to create a connected environment.

What challenge were you trying to address with UX Connections?

They were involved in refreshing a dashboard interface to make it modern in both its UX and UI. We needed a deeply involved partner to guide us in integrating our clients' wishes without sacrificing the cohesive logic of the dashboard.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We asked them to build a clear plan in the beginning, which they successfully realized, and they included us in all the project steps.

They moved through the project in a number of stages: first was discovery and immersion in our tool, and second, was understanding our KPIs and user profiles. From there, they developed puppet wireframes and prototypes and recruited 10 users from our clients to perform script and usability tests. The last step was to finalize the UX/UI design based on input from those tests.

What is the team composition?

There were three people total. Chris (Founder) was mainly involved in the discovery and immersion step, and then Ali (UX Consultant) covered 90% of the other steps of the project. He was supported in parallel by Simon (UI Consultant). We only spoke directly with Simon regarding the shapes of the dashboard.

How did you come to work with UX Connections?

UX Connection had done some work on our PMS under another team. We wanted to maintain the same look and feel throughout our organization, rather than having different flavors for different products.

In the beginning, a couple of agencies provided UX/UI assistance, and the UX connection was smaller than the others, but, nevertheless, they were the most transparent and direct. They weren’t trying to sell us something. Rather, they were trying to understand our needs.

How much have you invested with them?

We worked together from April–June 2019.

What is the status of this engagement?

We spent 20,000 pounds (approximately $27,900 USD).

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

UX Connections delivered a clear, authentic, three-month-long plan one week after our discovery meeting. We were very at ease with them because of Chris. He was directly involved in the projects and understood in only a few words things that we were only just realizing.

From the first week — from the time they scoped something, everything happened exactly as they said it would. There were no surprises. There was a bit of a delay after a session sometimes, but that’s totally understandable and fine.

UX Connection was full of very clear, smart people who were precise and on-time. They were able to bring new ideas to open exchanges every time. We felt it was a good environment. They didn’t expect us to give them everything, but they did make a lot out of the few things we told them.

How did UX Connections perform from a project management standpoint?

I engaged in stand-up calls and questions over Microsoft Teams. UX Connections also used a tool to share the wireframe technology, including the raw files. They understood that we needed to continue the story of the dashboard after the first version was complete.

We didn’t need any project management tool because the project was well-scoped at the beginning with a table and file where we were could easily follow the steps. All our sessions were fixed and planned in advance.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The UX Connection did a great job overall. They were able to come to Geneva, and I went to London as well. I was impressed that, one day to the next, Ali presented possible solutions along with any potential issues he brought to the table.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Perhaps they already do this, but they should hold more sessions to expose step-by-step how projects evolve. Because what we were doing with them was small — there were nine people total from both companies — it all ran perfectly. I’m sure UX connection adapts their work for larger projects, so this isn’t a criticism per se.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Meet them. Even if you’re not feeling comfortable, have at least a one-hour phone conversation to understand their competencies.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I run the global advisory consulting team for my company, which broadly does business strategy, business analysis, design thinking, and change management. We use those skills to help people drive transformation, either to make/save money by becoming more operationally effective or to generate new revenue.

What challenge were you trying to address with UX Connections?

We’ve collaborated with UX Connections many times over the last few years, so our teams are accustomed to working closely together. Most of our projects focus on UX design. We’ll bring them in for their expertise in niche areas, and they’ve enhanced our team on a number of occasions. They’ve also done work for a handful of our accounts, too.

What was the scope of their involvement? 

Our varied projects have spanned a variety of different tasks that have probably consumed many of their service lines. These have often revolved around customer journey iteration, needs-analysis articulation, competitive comparisons and UX for digital apps 

What is the team composition? 

Teams vary based on the project context, so we establish the best configuration of their people and ours. They typically provide UX specialists, consultants, strategists, and designers.

How did you come to work with UX Connections?

I’d known Chris (Founder & Managing Director) for a long time, now. We’d worked together at a previous company, and I trusted his work. When I had a relatively urgent need for a project that I was working on, I turned to Chris to collaborate.

Since then, Chris and his team have become an extension to us, and we’ve become accustomed to working together. When I have the right profile of project, I often consider them working alongside us. 

What is the status of this engagement?

They’ve been working with us since January 2015. The longevity of the partnership speaks to the quality of their work.

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

The projects that we’ve done with UX Connections have generally gone very well, thanks to a combination of the work quality from our team and theirs. Chris and his team are agile enough to meet both our customers’ needs and ours. They’re flexible, and the team doesn’t walk away from problems, either. Anytime we’ve had an issue, we’ve dealt with it.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We both jointly invest in winning new projects together – sharing in the success or failure of the bidding process. That shared work ethic makes it very easy for us to work together.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you can get a good team that works well together, then you should pursue it.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the managing director of a UK-based multimedia publisher. We publish magazines, websites, and digital publications.

As an organization, we have been in existence for ten years, but some of the brands that we publish have been in existence for almost 100 years. We have a range of publications in the food, gardening, entertainment, sports, and history sector to name but a few.

What challenge were you trying to address with UX Connections?

We have an internal UX team that UX Connections supported and became an extension of that team.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We were looking to explore and develop new products around personalization for our digital audience, and UX Connections were helping us in terms of understanding and researching those opportunities and helping to develop the best UX proposition to deliver those products.

We were looking at products to deliver a personalized TV and viewing guide platform for our audience. They helped us develop the user journey and defining what the user needs were, how best to deliver upon those user needs, and specifically getting into user research, testing, and refinement of the layout of that product before helping us to build out wireframes to then develop against, and finally helping build out the frontend UI to bring our product to a real MVP that we could then test in a live environment with our audience.

This particular project was around six months. The beginning of the project was around scoping, effectively identifying the user needs, and then brainstorming and building out propositions to deliver against those user needs.

Following that, they developed a roadmap for delivery against those user needs that included focus group testing and remote live testing with users, and UX Connections would pull together that feedback and feed it back into the working group for decision making to then refine the UX process to then help build out the wireframes for the development and production.

Over the course of the first four months, we then got an MVP to launch. We then tested that in a live environment for two months before deciding to shelve that particular product to focus on our initiatives.

What is the team composition?

There were maybe two people that worked on that project.

How did you come to work with UX Connections?

We have an essential UX lead and team, and they identified UX Connections as being a good fit for flexible resource expansion for specific projects.

What is the status of this engagement?

It would’ve been November 2019, and the project wrapped up in March or April 2020.

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

It was nothing specific to hang my hat on, but I would say that they seamlessly integrated within the business and quickly got up to speed with my team's requirements.

They actually felt like a natural internal extension of our business as opposed to a third-party brought on. Their team did a very good job of integrating quickly with the business need and getting up to speed with the culture and operating within the organization.

How did UX Connections perform from a project management standpoint?

In terms of project management, we had our own team internally. One of their team members, Becky (UX Consultant), was part of my weekly working group where we would update on the project, progress, and any key decisions or problems that we dealt with.

Outside of that, there also would be specific UX decision-making sessions that were set out on an ad hoc basis and as when we reached a key decision point in that roadmap.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Bringing them in wasn’t a decision that I made. I would benchmark them against our own internal team.

They’re bright, quick, and efficient. They’re very skilled in their process.

Are there any areas they could improve?

With UX in general, it goes back to the point of being able to hang against some clear KPIs of success. It is always difficult to be able to acknowledge what success looks like.

They’ve delivered against the timescales we agreed on, but whether they achieved a five on that is difficult to say because it is always based on the outcomes, and we didn’t go live with the project.

It isn’t their fault in any way, shape, or form. We would definitely work with them again because the individuals were a good fit with my team.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Embrace them very quickly and integrate them as if they’re part of your own team. They will very quickly get up to speed with the requirements of your business and help deliver the outcomes.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I was the head of UX and design for a publishing company that publishes magazines, as well as the websites for those magazines. The company started 15 years ago and they bought the publishing arm of BBC.

What challenge were you trying to address with UX Connections?

The company was working on a project to move everything off of the old platforms to the new ones, so we had a large project of rebuilding and redesigning all the websites into one platform. That’s when we needed to expand the capabilities of the arts and design division and hired UX Connections for UX strategy consultation.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They identified where the gap analysis of our insights to design and serve what the users needed. They did user research and actually went out in the field to actually interview people. Afterwhich, they wrote the transcripts and ran a workshop so that the team that was building the content really understood the information.

UX Connections presented the information in such a way that really told the story, so that the people who were doing the strategy can pivot and provide more value to the customers.

We deal with different audiences for each of our websites. Some of them already had a US designer working with them and some didn’t. In these cases, we had UX connections expand the team to have them step into a role for a particular magazine/website. Additionally, some of the projects needed more research and work done, so UX Connections came in and got a level of insight from the audience that we didn’t have the capacity to do. 

What is the team composition?

The number of people that UX Connections provided initially was a couple. After we saw their value, we had about six of them that were integrated into our team at one point.

How did you come to work with UX Connections?

I worked with the person who started UX Connections from a previous company years ago. I’ve always kept in touch with them, along with several other employees from that company. I brought UX Connections forward to the CIO, along with several companies, so they can choose who they want to extend the team with.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $25,000–$50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from February–October 2019.

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

The quality of their work was good. In some cases, they over-delivered, but they definitely helped our company get to where it needed to be in that time frame. They had slightly different impacts on the different portfolios of the projects. Some projects had light touches, while others had the UX Connections fully integrated. Overall, I’d like to think that my previous company would contact them again if they needed more support.

UX Connections had a group of people that had different fortes. Some are good at doing UX research like interviews, and some are good at executing prototypes. The engagement was far more catered to our actual needs rather than just having someone with a pulse sitting in the seat doing their job.

They sort of took on an invisible role and took the time to really understand where our gaps were. However, as much as they fill the gaps, they don’t use the same recipe for each project we participate in. They don’t use any cookie-cutter solutions. They’ll tell us that they need to research more on this specific area, and they’ll get back to me with more information.

Another thing was they’re absolutely willing and able to come in and integrate with our teams in the office. I think that was a really big plus for them to become temporary full-time employees to work within our approach, and get the project done. They were flexible and they were able to deliver the quality of stuff that they’re used to doing.

How did UX Connections perform from a project management standpoint?

They kept their timesheets clear and updated us if they felt that something was going to take more time. They would let us know how long a project was going to take which was solid.

Additionally, they were very good at navigating the project management process. That part was always a bit of a challenge because there were too many people driving the project. The team adjusted, but they also piped in when they thought something could improve the process. 

As far as our project management relationship with them, they were very organized and managed our expectations well. They had a sense of self-awareness about the kind of people they were working with, and what battles to fight.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We found their financial flexibility and realistic rates to be most impressive. They were flexible in offering the different ways they could work with our existing needs and process. They’re definitely more adaptable than other big companies that provide entry-level talent. UX Connections was very specific and they were very focused on user experience and design, rather than trying to be a full-service agency.

The other agencies weren’t listening to the fact that we already have an internal team doing most of the work they’re offering, like copywriting and developing. What we needed was a period of expansion so we could get past the timeframe hump of insight gathering — which was like second nature to UX Connections.

Moreover, they leave a level of knowledge so people can start doing the process themselves to a certain degree. Some companies want to feel indispensable so they’ll work on the project and won’t share their knowledge. UX Connections are more about leaving a trail of knowledge behind them so companies are more empowered, rather than making them reliant.

Are there any areas they could improve?

What I could think of are things we could’ve done better or differently, so that’s a tough question to answer.

However, they had someone come in who wasn’t as good at project management as the others. I don’t know if it’s a criticism of UX Connections because they were joining a lot of other managers in the project. It was kind of like an extra voice saying the same thing everybody else is saying, but it was actually our company’s decision to bring another person in, not UX Connections’.

They should be more proactive when it comes to making these kinds of decisions. I think they shouldn’t get tempted into that trap of saying yes, then figuring it out later when it comes to stuff outside of UX.    

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Take the time up front to have a really good brief about the project, figure out what success looks like to you, and identify how you want the process to feel like. Don’t decide based on what you want to see in the end. A lot of companies panic because they don’t walk themselves through their whole process and how they want their experience to be.

You have to have some point of truth of what your expectations are. The more information people know, the faster the work will go. It doesn’t even take much effort to get everybody on the same page. It’s also very cathartic because you will also realize what you’ve missed.