Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a sales representative of a tech firm in Japan. We do digital production covering from web design, app development to xR and hardware. Our clients are in all fields, especially in electronics and advertising.

For what projects/services did your company hire EGO Creative Innovations?

We had a plan to launch a new solution of UI/UX, and were searching a team that can cooperate with us. We hired this team to provide the site design of the landing page of this solution. We will continue cooperating for this solution itself as well.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We looked for several companies and designers beginning from connections on LinkedIn and introductions of people. We chose this vendor because of their high ability and industry experience, personable team.

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

First we were thinking of making a flat design in a short period. After discovery meetings, thanks to their advices, we decided to change the concept to make a more exciting page, so as to let the users enjoy and give an impact to present this solution. Feedbacks were through Figma and Google documents. The vender came back with beautiful 3D animated designs, organized structure and a catchy slogan. They also helped us brushing up our press release.

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

In total, we worked with 7 people including 4 Chief-ranked officers, 1 project manager, 2 designers.

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

Not to mention their design, variety of proposals, understanding the other party's wishes, their research and document creation were very professional. It was great to have been able to have a through discussion rather than one-sided from us. The Landing page has a good reputation and everyone says WOW.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Everyone was easy to contact and gave us prompt replies. It was our side that changed the schedule and we appreciate they had patience and responded flexibly. The communication was on Mattermost and e-mail.

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

First, their quickness. Their mind and capability to present something that far exceeds our expectations. Each individual's ability is high, and their unity as a team is also strong. They know how to guide the other party to the goal. As a whole, everyone is kind and genuine, they make us happy every time.

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

I can't find anything so far. We would love to work with them again.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Woodstock is a Fintech start up based in Tokyo, Japan, aiming to provide a social investing network for young people in Japan. I am the CTO of Woodstock

For what projects/services did your company hire EGO Creative Innovations, and what were your goals?

We want to develop a cross-platform mobile application, which is the core product of our company. While we don't have enough engineering resource as a start up company so we decided to delegate all our mobile app development work to EGO team while we can focus on the backend and infrastructure. Our goal was to release the MVP version in 4 months and make a pre-release version before Sep, and we are happy to see the result is quite good thanks to EGO team's great effort.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We researched online and did some benchmark among different vendors, EGO is the best team with good cost/performance and tech skill and communication management skill.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We provided the Figma design to EGO team and explained our schedule, we planned to release a MVP version which only supports iOS in 4 months while we still want to use Flutter for development since it's the best cross-platform mobile application framework as far as I know. After the MVP release, we designed the pre-release version with EGO team and finally worked out a Figma design and EGO team delivered the pre-release version in right time.

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

A project manager who is really good at project management and communication, two senior mobile developers joined the engineering team. Besides, there is always one QA tester from EGO team who is testing for us and managing the bug report

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Within the MVP version, we successfully gathered more investment resources and make our VIP users (including our investors and influencers in the industry) on-boarded.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

The project manager is very skillful and reliable. We basically use Jira for task management and Confluence for doc management, while we can always talk to each other on Slack and Mattermost. We also have daily standup meeting and weekly report meeting and the project manager will host the meeting and get the status updated.

Before/after any status update and change request, she will send us email notification so that we can clearly understand the current situation. The project management is quite good although we have time difference.

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

The overall service quality of their team was very impressive. Their tech guys write robust code while the project management is satisfying.

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

So far so good

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Head of Mobile Product at a fintech startup. We are a financial services platform that provides our users with the tools and the incentives to save more of what they earn.

As the Head of Mobile Product, I lead the design and engineering teams to deliver high-quality financial service experiences for mobile devices that align with business and brand objectives.

For what projects/services did your company hire EGO Creative Innovations?

We hired EGO Creative Innovations to assist us in the process of redesigning our mobile application. Our internal design resources are entirely focused on work related to new feature sets. In order to complete a redesign of already existing features, we needed additional resources from an external team.

What were your goals for this project?

Our current app navigation is confusing and doesn't provide a good representation of the information and actions that are most relevant to our customers.

This project aimed to take an existing hi-fi wireframe and iterate with EGO on layout, styling, and animations to ensure the next version of our mobile app would better represent our brand and make the overall experience of using the app more enjoyable for our customers.

How did you select EGO Creative Innovations?

My CEO connected with them previously and introduced me to their lead product manager to discuss the possibility of working together.

Describe the project in detail.

Our team provided hi-fi wireframes to describe the various states and the information we expected on each page. Throughout the collaboration with EGO we documented experiences and functions that were of the highest priority to our users in order to more easily communicate those across teams.

The team at EGO was able to provide suggestions related to how we could adapt complex concepts into easy to understand visualizations and layouts.

What was the team composition?

The team included a project manager and a designer. The project manager provided us with weekly updates related to the budget's status and how we were tracking related to the project goals. The designer regularly delivered design updates based on initial specifications and ongoing feedback.

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

We are still engineering the experiences designed by the EGO team.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The workflow was very efficient. The project manager scheduled weekly meetings with me to discuss the progress of the project. We used Figma to collaborate on design work.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They quickly digested complex ideas specific to our business and produced work that clearly represented the ideas.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I noticed that some of their design styles seemed to be similar across fairly different industries. It may have been a safe aesthetic choice, but I would have loved to see some more unique and captivating experiences when determining a direction for our product.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CTO of a Travel Planning Startup based in Boston, MA. We are very early stage with a few thousand users using our online tools.

For what projects/services did your company hire EGO Creative Innovations?

We already have desktop and mobile web interfaces for our application and wanted to accelerate building a mobile app by working with a development partner who has expertise in this area.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to get a first draft of the mobile app into the App store early in 2020.

How did you select this vendor?

We sourced a number of development partners both onshore and offshore based on recommendations from our network. We then worked with 5 of these to come up with a more detailed estimate based on our initial specification. We then came to choose EGO due to their insight and diligence during the estimation process as well as the eventual cost estimate.

Describe the project in detail.

Once we decided to work with EGO we held a number of product meetings where we worked with both their Product Manager and Tech Lead to finalise the specification. This was a very useful process and EGO were able to help us with making some important decisions on the final product detail. Once we had enough of the specification to move into the development phase we then worked on a 2 week agile cycle to develop, test and review.

What was the team composition?

The primary team consisted of a senior developer, a junior developer, a product manager and a tester. All but the junior developer were part-time.

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

The first phase of the project went fairly smoothly but there were some delays in completing that phase. The team were very flexible resolving those delays which we appreciated. The second phase was intended to complete when we launched the App into the App Store but we ended up pulling back before completing this phase due to the Covid-19 pandemic having a severe impact on the travel space. It is our intention to pick the project up with EGO again in the future.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Communication we generally pretty effective. They responded quickly and never wasted out time.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The team was very good at understanding our goals for the app and providing insight into the mobile experience. That helped us work towards a better solution together than we would have achieved without them.

Are there any areas for improvement?

There were some staffing issues that caused some delays and the speed of development was at times a frustration. Also we found that a larger than expected number of issues were picked up by our product testing rather than by their testing team.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Founder & CEO of Small Wins LLC, which develops mobile applications to enhance the lives of new moms. The company is based in Chicago, Illinois and BAMBAMSleep! is our first app. I am the sole Founder so my role is quite diverse at this point. My focus so far is getting the idea off the ground, hiring, beta testing, customer success and marketing. As the company grow, my role will likely narrow in on hiring, customer success, marketing and fundraising.

For what projects/services did your company hire EGO Creative Innovations?

EGO Creative Innovations was selected after interviewing multiple creative development agencies in the US and abroad. Their team helped me bring the idea for BAMBAMsleep! from basic wireframes I had built in Sketch to reality. I worked with a project manager, UX/UI designer, developer, quality assurance and others. We had meetings twice a week to discuss every aspect of the project and Irina, our project manager did an excellent job at keeping everyone on the EGO side coordinated and within scope, timeline, and budget. The weekly meetings also helped hold myself accountable. Without all of these people, the project would not have come to life. Most importantly, the team was experienced enough to take my ideas and come back with thoughtful, well-research suggestions, which together made the product better than I had originally envisioned.

What were your goals for this project?

The goal was to build the iOS version of the MVP and to get it ready so it could be launched on the Apple Store.

How did you select this vendor?

I interviewed vendors based on recommendations from established mobile app developers. All the vendors I interviewed were very high quality. Ultimately, I decided on EGO because of the quality of their developers and team as well as their ability to create a high quality project with customized UI/UX design within my budget. It was important to me that the app was not "cookie cutter" design and they were able to make that happen. Furthermore, they were committed to meeting with me on a very frequent basis, so I felt that I was very involved in the outcome of the project.

Describe the project in detail.

I sent them the initial wireframes that I had built and the first couple of weeks were to discuss ideas, goals and logic. There were many logical issues that we had to sort out and they were very dilligent and patient in working through this. My meetings were twice a week and were always with both project manager and designer. The designer had flowcharts that I could see to review the logic and after a few weeks, she had designs of the main screens for me to review. Once approved, she quickly designed the rest of the screens and got my a clickable prototype that I could show to potential users and friends. After the approval of the prototype, the developer worked on it. Ultimately, the developer built 33 versions and during this process, there was a lot of back and forth with final details and changes.

What was the team composition?

Project manager, UX/UI designer, front-end/back-end developer, QA.

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

At this point, we are beta testing the app and I am getting favourable feedback and no bugs yet! EGO helped me meet all the criteria to get the app approved by the Apple Store upon first try. They have also given good expertise and creative material to use in my separate marketing efforts.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The project manager assigned was great and kept the project moving , on time and within budget. She was a very effective communicator and got back to me on things super quickly. Despite being in different time zones, we were able to work together very effectively. I never once felt like I was out of the loop.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They coordinated, worked quickly, and included me on every step of the process. They definitely went the extra mile when it came to doing extra research and coming up with new ideas and suggestions for me. They took my vision and actively tried to make it better.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Not really