Retro Rabbit / SmarTek21, a leading African design and engineering software consultancy, has launched a comprehensive Design Hub with expert, integrated services to support clients globally. The services include an innovative design-on-demand offering, and user experience audits that meet stringent procurement and governance requirements.

Dion Nair, CEO of Retro Rabbit / SmarTek21, says the new Design Hub builds on the company’s 23 years of development and design experience, to meet evolving market needs.

“Technology is evolving as is the way people consume it, and clients' needs - both from a product and application point of view - are evolving. To meet changing needs, the new Retro Rabbit / SmarTek21 Design Hub has combined our: user experience; user interface design methodologies, and our digital design, into one team that now evaluates all aspects. So rather than having just one person run an evaluation, it's now carried out by a holistic team - all with different lenses and perspectives,” he says.

The Retro Rabbit / SmarTek21 Design Hub’s key services include UX audits, design-on-demand, and embedded designers; with over 30 experienced practitioners based in South Africa and Seattle in the US. The Design Hub also uses AI strategically to enhance outputs and enable skilled staff to focus on higher value support.

Putting UX to the test

Nair notes: “We often find the value of design, upfront, is underrated: executives may identify a business requirement and define what software needs to do to address it, but the actual usability of that software is not always tested in the market with their end users. A crucial part of design is understanding how you want your users to engage with the software while achieving business KPI’s or success metrics. We've seen companies investing heavily in building out a service or a feature delivered via an app or website, and then wondering why their usability hasn't gone up, why the persistence across the journeys hasn’t increased. Only then do they start looking at design. Only considering design impact at this stage can be extremely costly.”

For customers that already have software in production, the Design Hub audit service will help ensure success by evaluating it to find any design issues and testing the user interfaces from a user point of view.

Nair says: “We identify who is the target population of the application and build out user archetypes, then our engineers test the various journeys within the client's applications. We highlight potential areas of: improvement; failure, and even points of silent failure where the journeys do work, but not optimally. Importantly, this service does not require us to have systems access, so we don't need to go through security or compliance checks.”

Design-as-a-service

The Retro Rabbit / SmarTek21 Design Hub has also introduced design-as-a-service, offering clients access to design expertise as they need it.

Nair says: “While more organisations understand the value of design, they don't always need access to a person or a team, 100% of the time. Often, they want a designer to fit into their cadence of software development. That might mean buying two hours of design time one day or eight hours of it another day. We've structured a capacity model that allows clients to buy from us the amount of design services they require, on a daily basis and across a period of time. We've also built out an efficient bespoke system to handle these workflows.”

“Our onboarding process provides the team with detailed information and allows them to understand the client’s business requirements and development progress. We've also established certain gateways so that a senior designer signs off on pieces of work to ensure integrity and consistency,” he says.

Embedded design

Another service out of the Retro Rabbit / SmarTek21 Design Hub is embedded designers, in which the company’s designers work closely with client product teams throughout development.

Nair says: “Because digital transformation is not a destination, but rather a journey, a highly experienced consultant is embedded in the process, asking questions, seeking problems to solve, and helping clients explore the art of the possible. These designers understand the larger context of both the business and the environment, so their value goes beyond just design.”

The Retro Rabbit / SmarTek21 Design Hub supports clients across Africa, Europe and the US, offering globally competitive rates and decades of expertise.