We Make Waves

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of marketing for Dataswift. We sell personal data management solutions, which are backend technologies. Our primary customers are people who build apps and websites.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with We Make Waves?

We Make Waves is a development agency in London. They specialize in creating apps and websites like the ones our target customers look at as their main product. We wanted to build a partnership with them to help some of those companies build better quality products and get off the ground quicker.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We don’t offer any of the services that We Make Waves do, so they were the third piece of the puzzle. We provided a tool that developers could use, and our clients came to us without developers or as developers themselves to build the first version of their product. We Make Waves delivered, and sometimes they acted like staff augmentation, depending on the case. If the client had development capabilities, they relied on them to do a lot more, so they stepped in as the whole back-to-back team.

We engaged with We Make Waves in a large-scale project to build a new application with one of our existing clients. The application was a new kind of contact tracer that used privacy management solutions and our technology to protect the data of its users.

What is the team composition?

We worked directly with the three co-founders, all from a software engineering background. Kirsten (Co-Founder) was the director, and he led the project. The team also consisted of a product designer as well as native iOS and Android developers.

How did you come to work with We Make Waves?

We went through a pretty rigorous process. First, we got to know several development agencies in London and across Europe, and we worked with them in a trial capacity to see how good they were for the project. We Make Waves was one of these.

Over time, we got to know them and developed a rapport. We became pretty comfortable working with them, so we signed for our long-term partnership.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested between £50,000–£150,000 (approximately $69,000–$207,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We began our partnership in May 2019, and it ran until August 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Out of the many developing agencies that we worked with over that period, We Make Waves was the most senior and professional of the group by far. We were assigning different projects to different developers, and whenever we needed a partner with extremely high capability and confidence, they were always our first choice. We came to a point where we would always choose to work with We Make Waves if we had the opportunity to personally choose them, so they were a high-fidelity choice for us.

Overall, we appreciated their work and found them very good at scoping the expectations management side of the delivery process, which can be quite tricky. Their work was always ready to be delivered to an end customer and to the various intermediaries that we have to deal with in the web development world. In that sense, the quality of their work was extraordinarily high value.

Also, we could work with them on several different price points. Moreover, they were reliable — we could always turn to them and have a high degree of confidence and trust whenever we needed a job done.

How did We Make Waves perform from a project management standpoint?

They performed very well. We Make Waves was good at setting our expectations and managed us quite well, which can be a challenging part of service delivery. They were professional and flexible in setting up the appropriate billing mechanisms for our partnership.

Additionally, they did a great job managing the delivery process. With many projects, we inevitably ran over budget and struggled with some of the requirements on our side. However, they were very accommodating and managed service and product delivery exceptionally well, which is always tricky.

We communicated over email, phone, and in person. For project management tools, I believe we used Asana on our side, and they would’ve gotten access to it.

What did you find most impressive about them?

For such a small team, they had an extremely high capability in design and scope, as well as a high degree of reliability and code function. Also, they knew how to navigate through some thorny aspects of app development; some things that I would expect other agencies to either get costs to explode or just be unable to deliver at all.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Come in with an open mind about the scope. Many clients don’t have a full appreciation for what’s involved in app development, so if you want to make the best out of their capability, go in with a full spec and understand what you’re looking for. Then, listen to them and talk about the process to determine the best outcome.

Finally, trust the expertise that Kirsten and his team bring to the table. They were better than us at the stuff that we needed to be good at, and that made a huge difference in the quality of the products we delivered to our clients.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the vice president for the research innovation partnership at Dataswift, an infrastructure provider for the ethical management of personal data exchange and storage. I cover a variety of briefs connected to researching new applications and developing new tools for the ecosystem.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with We Make Waves?

We needed a team to develop a mobile application that could serve as a COVID-19 risk assessment tool.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

It all began with our hackathon with university partners that gave us the initial idea for an application that doubles as a contact tracing and COVID-19 assessment tool. Once we merged that with our own concepts, we decided to work on a mobile app that utilizes our own infrastructure as its backend. Our university partners and other stakeholders then designed the high-level architectural concepts to maximize the use of our infrastructure. We Make Waves was already familiar with our infrastructure from the previous work they did for us, so tasked them with building the frontend consumer-facing application that this system would require.

We worked with We Make Waves extensively for this development project, which included the initial scoping, UI and system design, managing submissions to the App Store and Playstore, and other development-related assignments. We provided them with an abstract view of the overall system we wanted to build, and they heavily referred to that as the project progressed.

Our mobile app’s main feature is a privacy-preserving tool that allows users to input their daily symptoms along with other related data. The information is then sent to our backend, and we process it to come up with a propagation analysis of each user's risks before we present them with two scores based on their reported symptoms and the people they've mingled with. 

Additionally, We Make Waves conducted extensive research on location pickup efficacy and contact tracing tools. This needed to be done as privately as possible, so there was a large divide between Bluetooth data and GPS data. While Bluetooth was more anonymous than the latter, it wasn't proven to be as accurate. We decided to go with a GPS-based solution, and We Make Waves examined how to maximize the said method's efficacy alongside our university partners. 

What is the team composition?

We work closely with two of their co-founders and one developer.

How did you come to work with We Make Waves?

They had done previous work on other applications developed on our platform, some of which we’ve been continuously supporting and incubating. Knowing their team as a reliable partner, we decided to renew our partnership with We Make Waves to work on this development project.

How much have you invested with them?

For this particular project, we spent about $75,000. Overall, we’ve spent over $200,000 on several projects with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began collaborating with them in November 2019. We worked together on this project for about six or seven months but our partnership is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We Make Waves is a team of creative, skilled, and patient resources that continuously provides us with commendable results. For this project alone, they took the initiative to present new architecture and infrastructure ideas that our own team hasn't considered, and those changes positively affected our platform. Overall, they're a great partner that considers our needs and expectations.

How did We Make Waves perform from a project management standpoint?

We mainly communicate via Slack, Zoom, and phone calls, while we use Figma to go over their design work and concepts. We Make Waves has been impressively disciplined — they're always committed to meeting our deadlines, and they communicate effectively with our team.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We're always impressed with their familiarity with our architecture, which leads them to create on-point tech solutions every time. Additionally, they're a very involved team that shares the same ideals as us.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

We Make Waves is an experienced group that's worth your while. Don't hesitate to give their services a shot.