How does Startappz still delight clients?
Intro:
In 2013, Startappz started its journey in the digital transformation industry as a service provider in the MENA region. Since that time, it has been in Startappz’s DNA, as a company, to make the customer not just satisfied but also excited, rewarded, and super happy!
Working with clients worldwide, has considerable expertise in successfully managing and transforming highly-complex businesses by improving their performance and reshaping their industry. Startappz is strategically placed to help customers deliver better products, services, and business processes through digitization. Our customers are not only satisfied but also proud and vocal about how Startappz managed to assist them in making the right decisions that transformed their business.
So, How Startappz achieved that? Supporting and influencing entire sectors? Nader Al-Azzeh, the creative director at Startappz, will help unpack the methodology.
Nader is a Creative Artist/designer with more than ten years of experience in many regional and international companies; Nader has a solid background in User Experience design and is considered a leading talent in launching professionals.
Qasim: Nader, before we start talking about Startappz methodology, can you please share with us the challenges in such a service?
Nader: Thank you, Qasim; it depends on how deeply we understand their business/services and how we can shape these services to be more desired and precise for the end user.
Our creative output from Startappz is more than a typical kind of implementation; we have to complete a UX task before every new project we receive and begin comprehensive research each time; this is a rich & great experience that comes from honest hard work.
Second, some of our clients are well-established enterprises and leading companies in the market that provide such kinds of innovations in UX. These kinds of clients need strong stakeholder management from our side to maintain the relationship and push the innovation a step forward. The high number & the diversity of the stakeholders make our job more complicated.
Qasim: It’s a bit unclear to me. If you are building a UX/UI for an app as an example, isn’t it hard to take all these approvals? What is the effect if someone doesn’t accept your output?
Nader: It’s not my issue; my concern is to match their goals with the end user’s needs and to reshape their objectives in the user journeys and services that express their users’ tone, to have solid expectations, and build suitable services.
When you try to innovate an experience, several departments will be involved and included in this experience. Sometimes the legal and finance departments also have their share of participation too.
Qasim: I thought that the UI/UX is for the end-user only; what you are saying is interesting. How does it work?
Nader: This did not surprise me. This is most people’s perception, even in our field, from their point of view. It is more related to the user interface.
Qasim: Nader, between all these things, give me something you feel has the best impact on Startappz’s customer satisfaction.
Nader: The answer is that It’s tough to understand and to serve all the stakeholders, but what I can say is that they are all usually impacted by doing the end-users at the end of the day. We always use a design thinking approach where we allow the user to choose.
Qasim: I like that. Can you elaborate more? Can you give an example?
Nader: Sure, let’s talk about the menus in the app, like the information architecture and clustering; it looks easy to write down the main menu or the site map. Us, we don’t even decide on this. We use tools to know what is the best categorization that will make the user understand the navigation in a better way.
We use card sorting, where a sample of the targeted users will do the categorization, then we take the results and build something that fits most of them. The results will surprise you even if something seems clear, like an app’s menu.
In the card sorting exercise, you can do it many times between the open and closed one to find out how the user will label the features of the service and find the pattern, so sometimes they arrange the elements based on the relevancy or functionality, so you do this until you have a decent Similarity matrix.
If you want to check a real case, you can look at this case study .. the link; you will see the tasks, tools, and results. Click here
Qasim: It seems like it is a long journey. What if one of the steps goes wrong? There will likely be disaster output.
Nader: Sure, a lot of dependencies!!, because of that, we use the double diamond methodology. It is a test-driven approach where we do validations and tests for every step, and to be more specific; we do tests with the same targeted audience as real users; I am not talking about our team tests.
Following the process step by step until the UAT phase, our usability testing dominates the process to de-risk the project’s output.
As you know, the role of “building the quality from the beginning is less costly than bug fixing”.
Qasim: Thank you for your time, and good luck!
Nader: Thanks for having me.
Testimonies from our finest Clients:
Mr.Stephen Rawson - Strategy Consultant at Oliver Wyman
“Oliver Wyman works with Startappz to plan and develop strategic, high-quality digital solutions that address our clients’ biggest opportunities and challenges. The Startappz team’s comprehensive expertise and partnership mindset help us deliver best-in-class user experience over secure and scalable systems”.
Mr. Rob Beswick, Managing Director of Virgin Mobile Middle East & Africa. “We are delighted with our relationship with Startappz; they have quickly become a key strategic partner for the business allowing us to develop an award-winning digital experience for our members.”
Mr. Salim Majzoub, General Manager - Marketing Communication at Mobily “We’ve worked with Startappz’s team on various strategic and challenging projects. Their professional engagement, unconditional cooperation, as well as their genuine dedication was the reason why they became part of our team. They looked after the Mobily brand as much as we do; I’m looking forward to starting our next project together.”