DESIGNCOZ 2022-23: Our Year In a Snap

It's been one exhilarating year at DesignCoz—Great collaborations, incredible partnerships, introspective team building and rewarding projects.?

It's been 8 years since Devina Coutinho and I founded DesignCoz | UX/UI Studio channelling her strategic and my analytical thinking. Since inception, we have grown 30% year on year. And, last year, our growth skyrocketed 141% (phew…a second for gratitude).

Here are 3 big learnings that kept us thriving & gave us an edge over the competition:

Staying humble and open to challenges?

• With the onset of the pandemic, overnight we had to figure out team dynamics that would work and thrive in a remote culture.?
• If that wasn't demanding enough, the new reality meant delivering the same top-quality products in 2 and a half months vs the conditioned end-to-end product design sprints that lasted 6 months.??
• By taking these uncomfortable situations head-on, we were able to productise design & that's also the gap that brought the product idea of Mockups In Minutes to life.?

Improving inch by inch, play-by-play as a team?

Often innovation is synonymous with pulling out a unicorn from the bag, it's actually looking at the mundane stuff and iterating little by little for the better. Jim Collins throws light on how “Great Companies” innovate in his books.?

• It's not just our expertise but the team as a whole that drives us forward, and we caught on to a key insight—Every Designer has an inherited thinking style (more in our blog) and that's the strength we started to play on. We were able to structure a well-rounded team in a way where everyone plays to their strengths.?
• We improvised to structure our files better for more promising intra-team collaborations.?
• We’ve even implemented a robust design system across projects to ensure consistency, reusability and pixel-perfect development.?

Working towards a true partnership?

• The more you give, the more you get—this stays true in life and in business. At DesignCoz, we've consciously set out to build partnerships (and be a team), not just an agency for founders. It's about understanding what needs to be done & what can be done beyond what has been said.?
• We genuinely design good, impactful products that feel personally rewarding as well.?
• We consciously take a call if a founder is a good fit or not for us & vice versa. And we've seen this filtration work over the years.
• The founders who have worked with us keep collaborating through different projects and new job roles (link)

So what's exciting in the new year quarter??

To officially begin working at our new office. Starting next month, we aim to conduct design discussions once a month. So if you are around, give us a walk-in.?

Hop onto Devina’s blog, where she does a rundown of founders that we work well with & approach reformations we’ve adapted over time