Do you offer a fixed rate per project?
We can talk about that if your scope and requirements are frozen and crystal clear.
Do you only work with startups?
Predominantly yes, but not exclusively.
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, like Tetrisly, tweak it to your brand colours and typography, and voilà! Hundreds of UI components like buttons, input fields, dropdowns, tabs and others are now customised to your brand and 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. While I wouldn't call this my area of specialty, I have led user research on projects with New South Wales and Queensland governments, and at Booking.com.
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!
How do we get the ball rolling?
Fill out the vibe check and you'll get to pick a date and time for a call so we can dig into the details of your project.
