For what services did your company hire Versions?

In the process of creating the mobile application we involved specialists from the agency in order to strengthen our internal team, strengthen our designer, to analyze the work that had already been done, find what can be improved, and moreover supervise the work of our designer so that the result will be stronger in UX because the specialist who worked within our team did not have all these sufficient skills at that time, so, in fact, the help that the agency provided us was the help for the very strong growth of our employee, in addition to UX.

What were your goals for this project?

Since it was a completely new project that we were developing in order to release it, the goals were to improve the flow that had already been done, point out the bugs in the UI, respectively, and fully finalize the rest of the flow in the application, come up with some interesting things that can potentially have a good effect on product metrics, i.e. this is essentially bringing the work already done on the project to the state when the project can already be put into development fully and then released to the world.

How did you select Versions?

I would probably say that for 3 reasons:

• 1 reason - because there was a positive experience of working together, interaction of our Director with the agency, and because the Director knew the strengths of the agency, and that was exactly what we needed.
• 2 reason - because those cases or something that we had seen, that the agency had already done, the awards that the agency had received, it all inspired a lot of trust.
• 3 reason - when we had such an introductory meeting, we got acquainted and probed how and what kind of work we would do there, but we had not fixed any agreements exactly yet, in fact, we also got a huge impression of onboarding into a new project.

These are 3 reasons why we have chosen Versions.

Describe the project in detail.

Ok. The stages, if we summarize them: the first is checking the part that we have already prepared, i.e. checking the adequacy of flow, checking, in general, how everything is potentially convenient for the user, checking why such decisions were made and how adequately they were made, later finalizing everything as for the application screens, both onboarding, and what happens to the user inside then, this is also the refinement of the screens with content that we sent to users, this is also work on the presentation of the product in the story, this is an icon, these are screenshots in the story, i.e. all-all stages, all materials that were needed in order to launch the application in the story.

In addition, there were, if I'm not mistaken, something like retro calls, i.e. an understanding of how effectively we move in such a symbiosis. Because the work was carried out both by the agency and by us, but at the same time the representatives of the agency, you, first of all, in fact, Alex did it, you curated the direction, gave constant daily care updates to our designer, i.e. in order the designer to do the work that had been agreed upon. The agency took quite a lot of the managerial part from us.

What was the team composition?

All communication was with one person, and I didn't have a headache, maybe, I need to write to someone, to ping. Although I understood that someone was doing something else there, but there were no problems with communication, and I was not engaged in tracking the deadlines of the agency team, and this relieves a huge headache, because all the pre-experience was, in fact, you had additional work when working with outsourcers because you began to be their manager.

Can you share any outcomes?

Before the agency came, we had a problem with our designer because it was his first experience in product design. Our design was more graphic, there was no understanding of how the product is built and that is important to make not just a beautiful product. We had a struggle to bring it all to him, the agency just finished this work, told and showed options.

I also really liked the fact that they didn't just say: there was a study, and according to it we needed to do like this, it was a story why to do so, why it was important to read something, to learn somewhere, it was some kind of ui/ux pumping process, not only for the designer, but also for the product manager, some kind of understanding process what I as a product manager can do for a designer, what I can pay attention to make the product better.

1. Additional education
2. Everything in the product got better: color solutions, unusual interesting solutions appeared. The product was modernized and became very competitive. And what is important, at that time I had done a huge number of interviews, UX tests, and shared the results. And firstly, these results were always taken into account and, as a result, they made a product, onboarding in which people went through to the end. In fact, these are very rare cases for the very first launch.
3. We realized that we had had some expectations from our designer, some assessment of his work, but in the end we realized his real qualifications and refused to work further. And it helped a lot because after receiving this knowledge when working with the agency the right person came to the role of product designer. We have already figured out how to search for these people, and the agency helped us to understand how to search.

How effective was the workflow?

It was a wonderful process, there was no moment when something was obscure or it was unclear who was doing what. Everything worked as a mechanism, it was clear to what results in what period of time we wanted to come. We came to these results. I measure efficiency in the format that we have set a goal and we have reached this goal, or if we have not reached it, we understand the objective reasons.

The only thing I didn't like was that the second designer wrote part of the questions in person. Because of this, I had to retell him all, but it was only on the first day. Maybe, I was annoyed because it all was in the Telegram. And now I think it would be more correct to invite them to our Slack and communicate there so that all the work would be in one place.

What was the extent of our participation?

To be honest, I don't really remember what kind of agreement there was at that stage, it seems to me that the agreement was, well, like something between full time and part time. But it feels like, in fact, the agency allocated a lot of time, because of some managerial tasks, assistance in building processes within the company, for example, how best to interact the product part of the team: the product manager, the developer with the designer. That's why the result was much more than we had expected.

Since a lot of work has been done, now the feeling is that it was full time. And it all was considering that it was outsourcing and we (the company) had a lot of different experiences with outsourcing and this experience was always very sad, because the representatives of outsourcing are constantly disappearing somewhere, they do not respond, then they come back, then they say that we agreed on the result and not for the part-time, in general, it is always an unstable story.

But in the current process of working with the agency, everything was very cool because there was a feeling that this was not an outsourcing team, but that we had a catalyst in the direction of UX/UI as a member of the team, and this also meant a lot. Because it really builds trust, because people are not just responsible for the result, but they care how we react, how it will be for users. And even after the work was finished and the product was released, they were interested in how things are going, how much people use. I didn't expect that to happen. This is a very rare quality, when it matters how the work is done.

Are there any tips for clients?

1. Form a clear understanding of what you want for yourself. And come with a task that the product manager will solve. Then the result will be much better because there is a product expertise in the agency.
2. Do not be afraid of new or unusual solutions, because there are a huge number of similar sites and applications in the world. But the fact that your competitor did so does not mean that it works great because the world is changing very quickly and the guys in the agency are constantly looking at different solutions. Give a chance to the solution and if you refuse, then understand the reasons, if you trust, you will get a much more interesting result than if you think in a template and search something you have already seen.