Kindly share your feedback on how Goodfirms has been doing so far in increasing your visibility among potential clients.
Until very recently, we haven’t been featured as “featured” on Good Firms, so we haven’t gotten too many leads out of it. According to Google Analytics, in April we had three users who came from GF.
Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the company?
Adam Fard Studio is a UX&UI Design Studio that specializes in designing products for EdTech, FinTech, and Healthcare industries. We’ve been helping businesses reach their goals through impeccable user experience for more than 4 years now. I am the Founder and the Lead Designer here, but since we’ve kept our agency relatively small, I wear many hats.
What was the idea behind starting this organization?
The story of our studio is quite an unconventional one I would say. I’ve originally had adamfard.com as my online resume and portfolio before 2016 (hence the agency’s name). In that same year, I decided to move away from being an in-house designer and build my own agency. The idea has worked out great for both our clients and our business.
What are your company’s business model–in house team or third party vendors/ outsourcing?
We have a remote team of in-house designers, so there’s no need for us to outsource anything.
How is your business model beneficial from a value addition perspective to the clients compared to other companies' models?
There are quite a few points I want to highlight with regard to our competitive advantages. Firstly, we operate fully remotely. This has numerous advantages for both our clients and ourselves. Not only we’re able to virtually nullify infrastructure costs, such as office rent, equipment, janitors, etc., but also source the best talent in the world for our projects to deliver truly world-class design at a very reasonable price point. Being remote also helps us minimize any issues that stem from time zone differences, opening up new markets, and geographies for us.
Secondly, given the current pandemic situation, our nimble remote processes have become the new norm in a matter of weeks. Unlike many of our competitors’, our processes have not only proven themselves to be crisis-proof but now we’re also able to help our clients adapt and thrive in the new environment.
Finally, I want to emphasize that our design has always been and will be about fulfilling business goals. That’s not to say, that artistry has no place in our work. Our designs are a combination of seamless experience that results in great business metrics and stunning visuals that can’t help but delight the end-users.
What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive? If yes, what ratio of clients has been repetitive to you?
Truth be told, I know that we’re capable of designing world-class products for any industry, but where we truly shine is Edtech, Fintech, and Healthcare & Wellbeing. I also want to mention SaaS as one of our specialties too.
As for customer retention, most of our clients come back with new projects. That’s the reason why we neither have nor need a sales team. We do an amazing job, customers come back for more. As simple as that.
Mention the parameters which are most important for you in developing an app design.
Having enough research, clear scope of work, defined objectives, and success metrics is a recipe for a killer design.
What key aspects do you keep in mind while developing an app design in order to enhance its usability?
Business goals are at the very core of our design decisions. While having a crystal-clear flow and a convenient interface is a must-have, in order to drive business we take into account key product metrics. Based on the metrics, we identify what areas need to be improved and design flows that nudge users in the desired direction.
We also like to shortlist everything we can do to enhance the products’ usability, and then estimate the impact and the development cost of these activities. That’s how we design a matrix that helps us find optimal design decisions that have the most impact and take the least amount of work to implement.
What are the key parameters to be considered before selecting the right framework for an app design?
As in any project, time, budget, and scope are the key determinants to the approach we are going to take. Naturally, we also take into account what the client has already built & researched.
Which framework do you suggest your clients to go for when they approach you with an idea? Why?
The framework we use most commonly for the brand-new ideas is Design Sprint. This design framework involves understanding, exploration, and validation of ideas, that determine a) whether the problem the product solves is worth solving; b) whether our way of solving this problem is optimal; c) what to build first. We should also note that Design Sprint does not include research, so that’s something we do at the very beginning.
What are the key factors that you consider before deciding the cost of a mobile app design?
Scope and time frame play the most important role in determining the cost. The more flows we have to research and design, the more our work is going to cost. The same goes for the time frame. The less time we have, the more designers we have to involve to meet the clients’ needs in time.
What kind of payment structure do you follow to bill your clients? Is it Pay per Feature, Fixed Cost, Pay per Milestone (could be in phases, months, versions etc.)
It very much depends on the clients’ needs and the format of our cooperation. If the scope is very clear and well-defined, then Fixed Price works great. On the other hand, If there are a lot of contingencies, we prefer to work on the Time & Materials basis. We usually work on a Retainer basis, if a customer needs constant design help, but there’s not enough work to make hiring an in-house team a worthwhile decision.
Do you take in projects which meet your basic budget requirement? If yes, what is the minimum requirement? If no, on what minimum budget you have worked for?
The minimum budget we like to consider projects for is $5,000.
What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2019?
Last year we had projects that spanned from $5,000 to $100,000 in the budget.
