Versions provided UI/UX design for an educational platform. They created all of the client's interfaces such as the websites' desktop, tablet, and mobile versions. The team also did the platform's other parts.
Summary
Two months after the development began, the client was able to make their first internal release. After that, they went public and began attracting end users, leading the client's first investment. Versions had daily meetings with the client to discuss the progress.
"We develop a free and open-access platform for online education and scientific communications, enabla.com, and I am the project's co-founder. We started the development two years ago, but a year ago restarted it from scratch because the previously hired company failed the task. Now our team is about fifteen people large."
We hired Versions to create all of our interfaces from scratch, including the desktop version of the website, its tablet and mobile versions, and branding.
We wanted to check our hypotheses by creating an MVP version of the platform, then find investments, make adjustments, and continue the development.
It was our second attempt to hire someone good enough to implement our idea; the company hired before failed after almost a year of work. I searched through the internet ratings of design studios and also used my personal connections.
After the initial estimates, I interviewed seven different companies and freelancers.
Versions were recommended to me by another member of our team who had worked with them. It was a tough choice considering their high price and our low budget, but they just stood out from all other candidates, and we started the work almost the next day after the interview.
Our project's heart is a publication page with a video lecture section, a lecture notes section, an inline discussions interface, a community corrections interface, and in-publication navigation. Since this is the most difficult part of the project, which was failed by the company hired previously, we started from this point.
After a series of intensive discussions and ten days of work, we received the first concept from Versions, and already two weeks after that, the concept was finalized and sent to the development team.
This was an insane success, which helped us boost the development in the most suitable moment. After that, we continued on other parts of the platform, such as the search page, publication submission page, user account, course page, and landing page.
My role was to coordinate different team parts, write task specifications, and control their progress. We discussed every valuable detail of the prototypes with Versions throughout the time we worked together, and their contribution to the platform's final look is undeniable.
Initially, I worked personally with Alex; he was responsible for the concepts and branding. After these parts of the work had been finished, three more designers were attracted to finalize and polish the work, with Alex watching and coordinating their actions.
With the help of Versions, we managed to make our first internal release less than two months after the development started, which is even more impressive considering that the company we worked with before that hadn't managed to release anything valuable in the whole year.
Already in half of the year after the project's beginning, we went public and started to attract users, and in yet another three months we had found our first investments.
In the most intense work period, we had daily team meetings via Zoom, while almost all routine questions had been being solved in Slack. I cannot say anything about the workflow between our teams because they literally were a part of our team.
Versions prototyped interfaces in Figma, everyone from the development team had permanent access to the prototypes throughout all the working process. Everyone could ask any questions to Versions in Slack and, if the question couldn't have been resolved in a few minutes, we left it for the daily meeting.
It wasn't just a formal collaboration; they really did care about the project's future. Alex and others from Versions had never been just wage-earners ready to do anything we asked; they questioned the value of any of our ideas and carefully improved it or even rejected it if needed.
They strengthened our strengths and leveled our weaknesses, knowing what we needed instead of just doing what we said.
I don't see anything that should have been done differently from the Versions side.
5.0 Scheduling
5.0 Cost
5.0 Quality
5.0 Willing to refer
UI/UX Design
$10,000 to $49,999
Feb. 2020 - Jan. 2021
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