TXI

Award winning digital product innovation firm

5.0 19 Reviews
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TXI is a strategy and product firm helping clients close the gap between ambition and reality. Founded in 2002, we operate with the philosophy that “trust is harder to build than technology.” 

We blend product, design, and engineering across web, mobile, IoT, and data into an integrated approach that's proven critical to our partners' success. We've built our software development consultancy around three small words and one big idea: tech done right. To us, it means more than clean code and sound design. It means doing right by our partners, by our peers, and by our community. 

We’re a group of endlessly curious people committed to driving change. At TXI, we are intentional about how we work and support our team and clients. Partnering with Fortune 100s, startups, industry leaders, and mission-driven organizations to deliver value through product innovation, we’ve continually earned that trust with each new product, user insight, and digital strategy.

TXI’s goal is to inspire, advocate for, and fulfill people with the promise and power of digital experiences. We listen carefully to our client’s challenges, then work as a team to connect ideas with unique thinking that will quickly deliver substantial value.

Read our case studies here: https://bit.ly/3khMKth

$150 - $199/hr
50 - 249
2002
Locations
United States
10 S Riverside Plaza, Ste 875–7670, Chicago, Illinois 60606
312-244-3766

Focus Areas

Service Focus

70%
30%
  • Software Development
  • App Designing (UI/UX)

Client Focus

80%
10%
10%
  • Medium Business
  • Large Business
  • Small Business

Industry Focus

35%
35%
15%
15%
  • Healthcare & Medical
  • Manufacturing
  • Financial & Payments

TXI Executive Interview

Mark Rickmeier
Mark Rickmeier
CEO
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Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the company?
Mark Rickmeier is the Chief Executive Officer at Table XI, a UX research, design, and software development company based in Chicago. Over the past 18 years, he has created more than 100 mobile apps, custom-built web applications, and intuitive user experiences for clients like Roger Ebert, Pauline Frommer, Maria Pinto, the Field Museum, AccuWeather, Discover Financial, and Tyson Foods.

In 2014, he founded Ops-Conf to bring together a global community of software companies to share insights and swap ideas on how to effectively run a consulting organization.

In 2017, he founded the “Walkshop” – a modern day hiking and design thinking retreat to lead senior executives, entrepreneurs, storytellers, and designers on a 5-day hike to generate new ideas and industry connections.

He is the author of the Sticky Note Game, designed to grow employee engagement and supercharge career development. He is also the creator of the Inclusion Meeting Card game, designed to help change a company’s culture to be more inclusive – where everyone can have a voice in critical meetings and crucial conversations.

He is the President of the Lake Bluff Alliance for Excellence and a board member of the Ravinia Music Festival, an internationally renowned, not-for-profit music festival that presents outstanding performances from John Legend to Yo-Yo Ma.
What was the idea behind starting this organization?
Table XI was founded with the idea of Tech Done Right – helping clients with design thinking methods to uncover new opportunities for their products (build the right thing), and agile discipline and engineering excellence to create a stable digital foundation (build the thing right).

Since 2002, we've partnered with the Fortune 100, start-ups in Singapore and Tokyo, industry leaders in London and LA, and mission-driven non-profits in our hometown of Chicago. These partners trust Table XI to deliver innovative solutions that drive their businesses forward. That trust runs deep - creating partnerships that have lasted over a decade and public reviews awarding us as the #1 custom software developer in Chicago.

Our UX research and product strategy teams help your product owners innovate, rapidly prototype, and validate new ideas for the business. And when you're ready to move quickly, our design and development teams collaborate in an agile fashion to quickly deliver results to production. This trusted process has allowed our partners to focus on their business objectives and move more quickly and flexibly than ever before.
What are your company’s business model–in house team or third party vendors/ outsourcing?
We partner with our clients to fuel growth, engage users, build audiences, sell products, tell stories, and drive results. We blend strategy, design, and software development execution into an interdisciplinary approach that's proven key to our partners' success. We're with you from concept to completion to iteration, making sure at every step that we're building a product that will delight users. And we find the best way to achieve that kind of partnership with our clients is for them to work closely with our team members – our designers, developers, and strategists. We strongly prefer and rely on an in-house team – rather than third-party outsourcing.
How is your business model beneficial from a value addition perspective to the clients compared to other companies' models?
There are a few strong differentiators, compared to other companies’ models:
• Product consultancy – not just development for hire: Don’t get me wrong – we love to build software and execute delivery projects extremely well. But we pride ourselves on being consultants first, helping companies discover new valuable opportunities and rapidly prototyping new concepts before we jump into development. If you are just looking for 2 bodies to add capacity, we’re not a good fit.
• We help after go-live: We provide maintenance services (hosting, monitoring, production support) and support our clients long after they initially go live. For many companies, they just help to create the MVP (minimum viable product) and then hand everything over at launch. We regularly help our clients with ongoing support to handle new enhancements, critical security patches, upgrades, and 24/7 monitoring of their applications.
• Strong track record: We’ve been doing this since 2002 and have over 100 applications in production. In that time, we’ve built a strong reputation for delivering digital products to market – and our first client is still working with us. We feel that kind of track record speaks volumes!
What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive?If yes, what ratio of clients has been repetitive to you?
While we have a wide array of clients across the US, Europe, and Asia - we have a few industries that we generally cater to.
• Healthcare: 30%
• E-commerce: 20%
• Manufacturing: 20%
• Non-Profit and socially focused, mission-driven companies: 10%
• Education Technology: 10%
• Fin Tech: 10%
Mention the objectives or the parameters critical in determining the time frame of developing a mobile app.
When looking at a timeframe – first you would consider a native application vs. a responsive design for a web application.
Assuming you’ve made the decision to go toward a native application, there are a few things critical toward the time frame:
• Tech platform: Using a framework like React Native can allow a team to build an app to support both Android and iOS and can save significant time and budget.
• User goals: The successful adoption and deployment of a mobile app depend on solving a real problem for its users. The best way we’ve found to determine the best features and the required timeframe for an application is to discover before we jump into design and development iterations. That means doing some user research, idea generation, and rapid prototyping to explore and validate ideas before starting the build out.
• Scope focus: We prefer to work in short iterations, hyperfocused on building the most valuable things first. Once in development, one of the most critical factors in determining the cost of a project is focusing on the scope that is most valuable (MVP).
• Managed risk: Most project teams focus, track, and measure the typical project constraints (timelines, budget, and progress burndowns). We feel that measuring risk is as important to the success of a project and can be graphed and tracked just as much as the other three constraints. Proactively tracking and mitigating risk in a software project helps to control the budget, focus the team, and protect against timeline overruns.
How much effort in terms of time goes into developing the front end and back end of a mobile app?
As with all things, this depends on the scope of the product being built. I would say most mobile apps can be designed, developed, and deployed between 3-5 months.
What are the key parameters to be considered before selecting the right platform for a mobile application?
Assuming we are looking to build something brand new (and not extending an existing application), here are the things I would consider:
• Existing technology: What frameworks is the company already familiar with? For example, if a company has never done mobile work before, but already has a team familiar with React on the web, using a platform like React Native can help speed up the process of onboarding to a new mobile platform.
• Cost: If a company is looking to launch with both Android and iOS support, using a framework like React Native would help to reduce to cost and time to market. Rather than building two separate code bases, in two different code bases, with two different teams, that have to be separately maintained – the speed to market, development cost, and long term maintenance cost can be reduced by developing with React Native instead.
• Your users: It is hard to say in the abstract what kind of application will be used or targeted without knowing more about the users. Some companies prefer to support Apple only – because that is where their desired market is. Before picking any framework, it is important to study your users and the features of the product.
Which platform do you suggest your clients to begin with when they approach you with an idea (Android or iOS) and why?
It really depends on the idea and the concept. Our recommendations start with the needs of the user and the desired functionality.
Android or iOS, Native or Hybrid — which platform is best to use to build your app? What are your recommendations?
Our mobile practice has really gravitated to React Native in the last few years as a way to build and support applications for both Android and iOS. There is a suite of tools that work well together to help with things like automated deployments, crash reporting, user testing, etc.
What are the key factors that you consider before deciding the cost of a mobile application?
• Design: How will the user interactions behave? How will we deliver a great user experience?
• Scope: What are the critical features that will be used in the product?
• Risk Tolerance: What are the key risks of this product and how might we mitigate them?
• Platform: What is the best technical platform we can use? Anything we’ve already built that we can leverage?
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.)
We work time and materials, based on a week team rate.
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?
We’ve done smaller applications for non-profits, and early-stage start-ups for less than $100k.
What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2018?
Typical mobile projects range from $200k - $600k.
Which business model do you suggest to your clients enabling them to generate revenue from mobile applications? Why?
It depends! I don’t know that there is a silver bullet. Different products require different monetization strategies.

TXI Clients & Portfolios

How 4 years changed mobile development, our mobile team and our client’s app
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How 4 years changed mobile development, our mobile team and our client’s app
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$10001 to $50000
100 weeks
Consumer Products

Sprout San Francisco came to us in 2012 wanting to connect with parents searching for non-toxic and eco-friendly gear. We saw an opportunity to grow saleswith a baby registry app, and helped Sprout capitalize.

Four years later, Sprout came back to update the app using all the sales data it had collected. We were able to deliver new functionality and a platform for massive potential e-commerce growth.

Using a chatbot to engage student leaders at Rice University
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Using a chatbot to engage student leaders at Rice University
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$10001 to $50000
100 weeks
Education

How do you grab the attention of an 18-year-old? That’s the question Rice University came to Table XI to answer. The school had recently launched its Doerr Institute for New Leaders, and needed to show students all it could do.

We used user research to find the best solution — a chatbot that would survey students via text, then match them with a customized leadership program. Then we built it alongside Rice's IT team, so they could manage it long after Table XI wrapped.

Delivering better UX for the Field Museum
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Delivering better UX for the Field Museum
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$10001 to $50000
100 weeks
Education

The Field Museum of Natural History wanted to learn more about its users — and it was looking for a UX design team capable of approaching the question with the same scientific methods the museum prizes. We embarked on a four-month research project to learn what users were looking for and what they were getting on the existing website. Analyzing the interviews, data and tests allowed us to give the Field a whole new understanding of its users, and a redesigned website to better serve them.

Supporting PechaKucha's worldwide event series as it doubles in size
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Supporting PechaKucha's worldwide event series as it doubles in size
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$50001 to $100000
100 weeks
Media

As PechaKucha’s storytelling series became a global phenomenon, its founders called Table XI to build technology capable of supporting their growing international community. Over the years we've collaborated on a website and an iOS app, taking turns flying between Tokyo and Chicago. Today our technology supports events in over 1,000 cities worldwide.

SuperBetter
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SuperBetter
  • SuperBetter screenshot 1
$50001 to $100000
100 weeks
Healthcare & Medical

Dr. Jane McGonigal built SuperBetter to see if gaming could help combat mental illness. That test proved successful, and after giving a TED talk on her findings, Jane called us to stabilize and update the iOS game and manage the technology. Together, we re-released a mobile app that will add 10 years to your life.

Giving a startup the flexibility it needs
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Giving a startup the flexibility it needs
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$50001 to $100000
100 weeks
Manufacturing

Cobbler Concierge had seen rapid growth in its first year and a half in business — and its original system was starting to show the strain. The shoe and handbag repair startup came to us for a code audit to identify any weaknesses or limitations in the software. The findings gave Cobbler a roadmap to stabilize the product and create opportunities to scale. In the seven months since we started, Cobbler has increased repairs by 66 percent, and growing.

Building a CMS and iPad sales tool for Keiser
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Building a CMS and iPad sales tool for Keiser
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$50001 to $100000
100 weeks
Healthcare & Medical

Keiser came to us with big plans. The more than 30-year-old maker of high-end fitness equipment — think training machines for NASA and the MLB — was preparing a huge marketing push ahead of their conference season. We were able to deliver a new website, CMS and iPad sales tool on a tight timeline and on budget.

Training doctors with a flexible, CME-crediting mobile app
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Training doctors with a flexible, CME-crediting mobile app
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$50001 to $100000
100 weeks
Healthcare & Medical

For decades, JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, part of the JAMA Network family of journals, has kept doctors sharp — and licensed — by helping them earn their continuing medical education (CME) credits.

Now, JAMA must provide the same education to a new generation of doctors used to getting everything on their phones. To create a mobile app capable of engaging these younger physicians, JAMA turned to Table XI and our agency friends at One Design. Together, we developed a dynamic app that’s informed by a modern set of needs.

Building a homecare app, and business model, from across the globe
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Building a homecare app, and business model, from across the globe
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$50001 to $100000
100 weeks
Healthcare & Medical

Tend's founder came to us just as Australia was deregulating homecare — opening up an opportunity to bring technology to a previously paper-bound industry. He needed a technical partner to make the most of the moment. Together, we conducted user research to identify pain points and find solutions. The resulting app gives caregivers, clients and families a digital space to coordinate and communicate, making homecare more transparent and flexible than ever before.

Developing an e-commerce app for Everything But The House
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Developing an e-commerce app for Everything But The House
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$10001 to $50000
100 weeks
Retail

After bringing startup innovation to the unlikely world of estate sales, Everything But The House needed an iOS app that could manage its hundreds of thousands of active users. We worked alongside them to develop an e-commerce app that can keep up with their rapid growth — and deliver the insights and analytics necessary to help them scale.

Giving Chicago Ideas a global media platform
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Giving Chicago Ideas a global media platform
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$10001 to $50000
100 weeks
Media

We’ve been the official tech sponsor of Chicago Ideas for four years running, helping it grow from an annual gathering of influential speakers to a global idea-sharing brand. That’s meant building a new event management platform and mobile ticket-scanning app, moving Chicago Ideas to a new administration platform and upgrading it to an AWS infrastructure.

This year we tested new ways forward with a Product Design Workshop. The result was a total responsive redesign and a custom content management system that lets CI’s staff build new pages from 38 stackable design blocks.

Bringing Dickson into the Internet of Things
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Bringing Dickson into the Internet of Things
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$100001 to $500000
100 weeks
Manufacturing

For the past 15 years, family-owned Dickson has looked to Table XI to secure its future through technology. We started by helping Dickson’s team understand their users’ behavior, then worked up to revamping their entire e-commerce strategy.

As a technology partner though, our job is to identify new ways to grow Dickson's business. That’s why we’re proud to announce the launch of the DicksonOne app, a centralized hub for product data that’s giving Dickson an opportunity to own a slice of the Internet of Things.

Roger Ebert
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Roger Ebert
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$10001 to $50000
24 weeks
Art, Entertainment & Music

Roger Ebert and his wife Chaz Ebert wanted to build a website that would serve as an archive, a conversation about movies, and a platform to invite and feature the voices of the movie critics they admired, and they brought Table XI on board to bring their vision to life.

Building NUcore, Northwestern University’s core facility management tool
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Building NUcore, Northwestern University’s core facility management tool
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$10001 to $50000
100 weeks
Education

Core facility management at Northwestern had the kind of complexity only custom software could solve. Sixty research facilities across two campuses were using a patchwork of systems to track usage and manage payments. To meet their varied needs, Table XI developed NUcore to serve as a single, seamless and transparent core facility management software. By creating a flexible tool, we’ve earned more than 90 percent adoption. Now administrators can get a clear picture of each core’s utilization and staff can spend less time on accounting.

TXI Reviews

5.0 19 Reviews
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Adam Wilhelm

Appreciative work

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Web Development, Software Development, Web Designing (UI/UX)

Jim Cohen

Tech done right

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Web Development, Software Development, Web Designing (UI/UX)

Paul Gee

Down to earth and Practical Developers

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Web Development

What is it about the company that you appreciate the most?

Flexible and Budget-Friendly Services

Sona (Gajiwala) Jones

Organizations will be in profit while working with them

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What service was provided as part of the project?

Web Designing (UI/UX)

Resources

Design Sprint approach
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