VisualPanda

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I used to work for Mirror. They are a mobile app startup trying to disrupt the retrospective performance review space. Their goal is to create a real-time app meant to be used peer-to-peer in a workplace setting.

What challenge were you trying to address with VisualPanda?

They were responsible for the creative side of the app development, acting as our design studio.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We started with a sprint week where we laid out our mission and vision for the app. From there, Jakub (Founder) created mock-ups, determining how the entire app would look. It was available on both iOS and Android.

When I left the company, we were kicking off three different pilots with companies in the Indianapolis area. The companies would use the app internally. It was available on the app store, and our team used it internally. We downloaded version one, and then we kept updating it until external people downloaded it as part of the pilots.

What is the team composition?

Jakub was our main person at VisualPanda, and there were also several others involved.

How did you come to work with VisualPanda?

My boss at Mirror had previously started a company and built a mobile app with VisualPanda. He said that they did great work and were competitively priced.

How much have you invested with them?

We invested around $50,000 in the whole project. Part of that cost went to the development company, so VisualPanda received a bit less than $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project ran from February until August 2020.

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

It’s hard for me to answer what happened after the pilot programs started because I am no longer working there. One of the metrics we set, though, was how many times does the user open the app per day. We set a lot more metrics internally, too.

The people at VisualPanda were good at making sure we were all aligned and included everything we stated. Additionally, they provided their own creative input. Through a collaborative process, we developed a number of great ideas. They certainly met our goals and developed the app with everything we wanted.

How did VisualPanda perform from a project management standpoint?

We had weekly check-ins that I always felt were transparent, as well as direct communication along the way. They were very easy to reach. If a deadline ever was going to be missed, or if there was confusion or a roadblock, we always communicated. Overall, it was very positive from a project management perspective.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their degree of commitment to and investment in the project stands out. We could tell that they cared about what we were making. That came through as they contributed to meetings at every step of the process.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Nothing comes to mind right now. It’s been a while, so I’m sure there were small things I noted as we went through the process. The timelines they gave us were sometimes a bit overly optimistic, but whenever we weren’t hitting deadlines, they were transparent in their communication about the reasons for the delay — everyone was on the same page.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Take advantage of VisualPanda’s incredible responsiveness. They want to produce a great product, rather than just check off everything you tell them. Make it a collaborative process where everyone has a seat at the table.

They’ve done so many of these types of projects that they have great experience and expertise. Make sure to hear their perspective.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and CEO of a company called DoubleMap, which was acquired by Ford in 2019. We provide software and services for transit systems around universities, airports, hospitals, and corporate fleets. Our primary offering involves real-time GPS tracking for public transit systems around the world.

What challenge were you trying to address with VisualPanda?

We engaged VisualPanda to design not only our widely-used mobile apps, but also our internal materials — like presentations, pitch decks, and other visual communication.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Visual Panda designed our iOS, Android, and desktop apps. They also designed the interface of the administrative portion of our platform, where transit administrators can make inputs into the backend.

We had mobile apps before working with them, so they worked off of these existing models before drastically improving the apps. In some cases, they created designs solely based on our ideas, essentially from scratch. They used the InVision app, which allowed us to click through the designs before they were implemented.

We integrated them into a marketing and design channel in our Slack, so they were treated as part of our team. Even though they were a different company, I instructed our team to treat them as part of our own.

What is the team composition?

Initially, I worked directly with Jakub (Founder, VisualPanda), but both of our companies grew over the course of the engagement. He eventually had a team behind him. I worked with around 5­–6 people from their team in total.

How did you come to work with VisualPanda?

VisualPanda used to do design work for a company we acquired called Tap Ride. We liked the aesthetic they offered, so we decided to continue leveraging them for design work.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent somewhere between $100,000–$250,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The engagement lasted for 6 years. We started working together in mid-2016, and even though we’ve been acquired, they’re still doing work for us.

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

The pitch desks that they helped us design have won us millions of dollars of business. Their work led to our successful acquisition by Ford, so they’ve been critical to our evolution as a company.

We have over 1400 customers and millions of daily riders who all use the interface that VisualPanda helped design. While it’s difficult to provide quantifiable results, the impact of their work is experienced by these riders every day.  

How did VisualPanda perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve been very strong on this front, as they skillfully leverage Trello boards and Asana to track project progress. Given that they’re in Poland, it’s reasonable to be concerned about communication, but we’ve never had any problems.

They’re extremely proficient in English, and Slack communication, as well as emails, have always been sufficient. We hold Skype calls with their team, and they’ve actually visited our office multiple times.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Where many designers can only create aesthetically appealing—but ultimately uncodable—designs, VisualPanda delivers stunning designs that can be seamlessly integrated with our product’s functionalities. In addition, their ability to build relationships, especially from abroad, is one of their strongest suits.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’re one of my favorite partners, so I don’t have any suggestions for improvement. If you go back 3­–4 years, both of our companies were experiencing growing pains, so they had to staff up to keep up with the incoming flow of work.

To their credit, though, they've excelled at addressing issues and have stepped up accordingly. They’re able to adapt to changing business climates, so they ultimately do a stellar job. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Just use them. They do a fantastic job and will make any partner look better than they currently do.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I founded a company called Windfall App, a small app for paying student loans. We have an American CTO, and the rest of our technology and design are outsourced.

What challenge were you trying to address with VisualPanda?

We wanted VisualPanda to help with concept ideation and logo generation.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They worked with us from ideation onwards, helping us throughout the whole design process. They built the wireframing of the app and supported us through development, updating the designs and themes while getting everything up and running.

What is the team composition?

There were three people on their side.

How did you come to work with VisualPanda?

I worked for a company that used them six years ago, so I had an existing relationship that I reengaged when I started on this app.

How much have you invested with them?

June 2019 is when I first began working with them, and the relationship is ongoing.

What is the status of this engagement?

I’ve spent around $15,000.

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

We worked very closely with them over three months, and they met all their weekly deliverables. They hit every deadline.

How did VisualPanda perform from a project management standpoint?

They perform very well at project management, keeping their team on task.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’ve done a lot of work with American companies, and understand the American business environment. It takes no time to get them up to speed.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could improve the daily visibility of the work. They provided great weekly updates, but it’d be nice to see the work on an ongoing basis.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have a dedicated manager oversee things from your side.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the UX Lead of an online hotel comparison and booking platform. We offer price comparisons for different online travel agencies, allowing users to get an overview of prices for dates, locations, or specific hotels they’re interested in. Depending on what they choose, they can go to one of these websites or book the hotel with us, if we have offers for that hotel.

What challenge were you trying to address with VisualPanda?

We were in the process of redesigning our website and improving our brand. Mainly, we wanted VisualPanda to improve the style and look and feel of the website.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They solely did web design: visual design services, some UX design.

What is the team composition?

We worked very intensively with Jacob, their founder, and Lydia, one of their visual designers. Every now and then we had the support of an illustrator from their team, Damien.

How did you come to work with VisualPanda?

Our head of strategy had already worked with them in the past with a different company. He was very happy with their performance so he recommended them for this project.

How much have you invested with them?

It goes up and down. There are months when we spend 60 hours in total on their side, and there are months where it can do down to 15 hours. It really depends on our timelines and roadmaps. In the beginning, it was more frequent, but it’s picking up again now that we’re starting a new project. They’re very flexible with that. Overall, we spend between €1,500–€5,000 ($1,640–$5,500 USD) per month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together eight months ago.

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

When we did the redesign, we ran an A/B test with the old one. Redesigns don’t typically don’t affect conversion, especially if it’s only a style redesign, and that was the case here. We didn’t do any other verification, whether it had any other impacts on customer experience.

How did VisualPanda perform from a project management standpoint?

They have a very structured method with their own tools. They also helped us onboard tools that could help us with our project management, making it possible for us to have multiple designers working on the same project by giving us version control of designs.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The first thing is flexibility. They really cater to our needs and timeline. In the periods where we need them to gear up, they immediately find a way to support us more intensively. When there’s less pressure, they scale down. They know how to utilize the different talents within their team and create availability based on what we need. That’s helpful for us because we can’t always predict what we’ll need. They really tap from their pool in an effective way.

Apart from that, they behave as if they’re a part of our team. They take responsibility and think with us. They don’t just work with us. They also have a critical voice, meaning they don’t just design what we tell them to. They also look at things from a different angle and bring value with their own thinking.

The other part is that, even though they’re remote, they’re very young and modern. They have all sorts of tools that make this way of working easy. Even though we’re in separate locations, the collaboration hasn’t suffered.

Are there any areas they could improve?

To be honest, I can’t think of anything. They’re doing their job well.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Involve them in the bigger picture. The more they know about the context, the better they’re able to think with you and solve problems. These are people who really want to understand what the problem is before they jump into solving it. Involving them in what’s going on—what you’re trying to achieve for the user—really helps lift the quality of the work. They’re not simply extra production hands.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a software development company that provides mobile and web development services with multiple clients all over the world.  

What challenge were you trying to address with VisualPanda?

They are an external provider for web and mobile design services. We do not have an internal design team, so we work with them on most of the projects that we run for our clients.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They provide web and mobile design. Mostly it involved UI/UX design, wireframes, and flow charts and things like that. For marketing, they make pamphlets and small branding pieces of assets for marketing purposes. Sometimes, they provide discovery phase workshops for our clients.

What is the team composition?

We work with their entire company, which consists of around six people. They mostly concern themselves with design, but also dabble in business analysis.

How did you come to work with VisualPanda?

We originally started working together around seven years ago. Our CEO is a friend of VisualPanda’s CEO, so we were referred to them.

How much have you invested with them?

Typically a project is between 7k-20k and we estimate that we've spent approx. 700k on the projects over last 7 years.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together seven years ago and the work is ongoing.

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

In most cases, they’re intertwined in the development process. Thus, they’re not only designing the work at the beginning of the project, but they’re also working alongside the development team along the whole lifecycle of a product.

We measure the deliverables based on the plan they give us, and 95% of the time they are on time. They are very flexible and adaptable to urgent requests from clients.

How did VisualPanda perform from a project management standpoint?

When they work with us, they adjust their resources to the way we work. We never had any problems with that. We’re really happy that we’re working together. They’re very flexible and experienced. We never had any hiccups or challenges in our work.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their ability to deliver on time—sometimes before the deadline—and their flexibility is the most impressive aspect of their work.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing that comes to mind.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the COO of one of the fastest growing Software Development Companies located in Poland.

For what projects/services did your company hire VisualPanda?

We had to find a partner who could help us to finish the UX/UI Design stage of two projects: custom e-learning platform project and internal Business Intelligence tool for our clients in a relatively short time.

How did you select this vendor?

We have contacted over 20 companies in one month that provided Design-related services, including VisualPanda. After technical & soft skills screening of dozens of UX/UI Designers, we concluded that their team seemed to be capable to deliver all of our project goals.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

We have cooperated with VisualPanda on two projects: a complex e-learning platform with lots of User Interactions that needed to be designed before entering the development stage and an internal BI tool for two of our clients. In both cases we were strongly impressed by Pandas – their “will do” attitude, blazing fast task deliveries before the deadlines and their proactiveness allowed us to seamlessly integrate their team of Designers with ours and deliver a proper solution for our client.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We have worked with Michał, Łukasz and Mateusz – they were managed by Michał who has substantial experience in Project Management and coordinating the work of UX/UI Teams. Overall, they were able to guide our clients in the right direction in terms of features, user experience and platform design.

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

VisualPanda's team allowed us to meet the tight deadlines with a reasonable budget. We were able to finish the Design stage earlier than we expected - allowing us to assign the dev team faster and thus cutting the waiting period before the stages.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The whole team of VisualPanda was great to work with - Michał was responsible for the day-to-day communication with other Designers, but we were also communicating directly with the rest of the team.

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

We were impressed with their overall knowledge about the UI/UX design process. It's worth to mention that they offered us to discuss some of the most complex project issues internally - with higher-seniority people that were assigned to our team to be certain that they are pushing us into the best direction possible.

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

Personally, I think that there is little to complain about their work - and we will definitely work with VisualPanda again in the nearest future.