Do you offer an hourly rate instead?
Yes, I offer a standard hourly rate at USD 150. We can agree to the number of hours. But keep in mind that if you're looking to hire me for a longer period of time, then you might be better off going with the USD 2,500 per week offer with a 4-week minimum hire.
Do you offer a fixed rate per project?
No, sorry. Some designers offer a fixed rate, but I don't. There are too many unknowns at the beginning of a project. Instead, I tackle one week at a time and give estimates of what I hope to accomplish that week, along with an update summarising my week's contributions at the end of it. This includes a clear breakdown of how long I spent on each task, down to the minute.
Do you offer discounts?
No, sorry. Aw shucks, I know. On a positive note, this means that I treat all clients equally and fairly.
How long does it take you to complete a project?
Usually 1-3 months.
Most of my clients hire me for a period of a few months, to help them launch an idea to market, and then they hire me again as they secure new funding and want to grow their product with new features. I've worked with some clients for years like this. Of course, there are some clients that I've worked with for a month, just to help them overcome a specific challenge. It all depends on the needs of the client.
Do you only work with startups?
Predominantly, yes.
On occasion, I'll work with larger organisations if there is little red tape in the process, and if the immediate product team that I'm collaborating with has a single product owner/manager who has the capacity to make decisions quickly. I aim to make a high impact in minimal time, and I find that smaller organisations offer the fewest barriers when it comes to just getting stuck in, and getting work done without political and design-by-committee nonsense getting in the way.
Do we need to sign a contract?
Yes.
View my standard plain-English contract. If required, it can be customised, but I find it does the job for most projects.
What kind of deliverables do you provide? Full design or wireframes only?
I don't do "wireframes".
I talk to you about what you need, create an inspiration board to plot the strategy ahead. We then discuss and align before a single pixel is created. Once we agree on the direction ahead, I'll then pick a UI kit, customise it to your brand needs and design all flows and high-fidelity mockups. By the end of the project you'll have ownership of all Figma files, including the UI Kit, mockups and prototypes.
How does a typical project play out?
It all very much depends. But supposing it's a web project where a product is being re-designed, it might play out a little like so:
New client onboarding to get the formalities out of the way, so I can roll up my sleeves and get cracking.
Product teardown which takes me a couple of hours. I only do this if you have an existing product that you want me to work on. I highlight any UX, accessibility and performance problems to fix, and a clear list of priorities.
Content strategy outline that takes a couple of hours. This is a collaborative task. If you have content and a solid content strategy, then this can be skipped. But I can't design without content. Designers designing without content is a bit like bricklayers building walls without bricks.
Inspiration board, which takes a couple of hours to put together. If you have ideas for features or UIs to be influenced by, then I'm all ears! It'll speed up the process. But I'll also scout the web because I have a knack for finding great ideas that our design solution can borrow from.
Set up of Figma UI kit so I don't have to waste $$$ designing the bare bones UI components. I'll discuss with your team to see if you and your developers have a preference for Material Design, Ant Design, or no preference. Usually takes a few hours, and is all done in Figma. I'll pick a ready-made design system tweak it to your brand colours and typography, and voilà! Hundreds of UI components like buttons, input fields, dropdowns, tabs and others are now ready to use. We've just saved ourselves dozens of hours by not creating these manually.
Design high-fidelity mockups for 5 different breakpoints for all major UX flows, web views, and every nook and cranny of your product. All done in Figma. This is the grunt of the work taking weeks to months, depending on the size of your project. Your developers will have complete documentation right in Figma. By using Figma's Dev Mode, they'll easily see every single layout, typography and colour attribute, and even have it shown in CSS for them. On top of that I'll provide handoff notes within Figma to explain any fine interaction details.
Oversee development. I'm there to assist with questions, and every week I'll spend a few hours QA-ing (quality analysing) their work to make sure that what's implemented is as good as the mockups that were designed. But I'm going to be honest with you here — the quality of implementation rests more on the craftsmanship of your developers, and how much you emphasise quality as the product owner. Often I've seen the quality of the design degrade if developers don't have a strong attention to UI detail. Having said that, when developers pay painstaking attention to detail, it's usually a joy to use the final product. During the QA process I often involve my colleague Edmir Fazlović to assist with this process because this process can be time-consuming and having him assist frees me up to tackle the bigger design challenges that still need to be tackled.
The above is an example for a typical web app or website project. Mobile apps projects would vary slightly. The process all very much depends on each project. I adapt to suit the needs of the project and the team I'm working with.
Do you run research efforts as well?
Yes, definitely. But keep in mind that this isn't my area of specialty.
I work best with clients who know what they want to build and have already validated their idea, and are now looking to design, build and launch on the market without delay.
Having said that, I also have extensive experience with user research and market research. Especially remote user testing is something I've utilised on projects with New South Wales and Queensland governments, and at Booking.com.
But I'm likely not the person for you if you want to spend months researching an idea before designing and building. It's good common sense to validate an idea before investing everything into it, but my belief is that with the time and budget required for prolonged research studies, startups ought to instead design, build, launch and iterate and pivot as they receive feedback from the market. Good research is invaluable, but one shouldn't get lost in dream land, and instead roll up their sleeves, build, ship, and iterate as needed. That is often the best form of research.
I trust that my clients have a good pulse of the market, and that their ideas rest on solid ground, and that it's now a matter of bringing it to life.
Do you also build websites?
Yes, for simple websites that run on Framer.com, which is actually the platform I used to build and host the website you're viewing right now! It's great at creating simple-yet-creative info sites like this one, and basic eCommerce sites.
However, for web apps, mobile apps, web3 sites, advanced eCommerce sites and XR products, and any sites with complex backend functionality we'll definitely need to involve some experienced web developers to help us bring the idea to life.
Can you recommend other experts when we need to fill a gap in skillset?
I can reach out to my network, and try my best!
If you need web developers, 3D artists, illustrators, content creators, photographers or any type of professional you might need, I'll reach out to ask. And I won't charge you for this. Good talent is usually hard to find, so I can't make guarantees but I'm surrounded by smart people, so fingers crossed, I'll find the right expert.
How do we get the ball rolling?
Fill out the 7-minute vibe check form, and I'll hit you up if there's a match.
