Lickability

I am the Product Manager of a software company

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1 Employee

We started working with Lickability because we needed to bring in a Kotlin developer who could help our team push a few standalone tasks over the finish line. Most of the work was contained to push notifications, authentication (2FA + biometrics), and onboardin

The Lickability team member completed all of the outstanding development tasks in the hours allotted. Members of the Android application can now sign-in with alternative methods, use biometrics, and receive push notifications

The team assigned an account manager and staff-level iOS and Android engineer to our team. They shared daily async updates, made themselves available for pre-project kickoffs, and integrated with our team's current working processes

They fit our company's culture, working style, and communication norms to a tee. We share a lot of the same organizational value, and they felt like an extension of our team.

Not that I can think of.

I’m the founder and CEO of Mastodon, a nonprofit that develops free and open-source software of the same name. It’s a decentralized social media platform.

I hired Lickability to design the UI/UX of our native mobile apps.

The initial steps involved a lot of calls to discuss the scope of the project. We had weekly check-in meetings where we discussed the designers’ progress. The prototypes were communicated through Figma, and they kept working based on my feedback and directions.

I’ve consistently interacted with three teammates from Lickability, namely Sam, the project manager, and the person who manages finances. Sam sometimes checks in with other teammates behind the scenes, but I mainly collaborate with him.

I found them through one of their clients who used an app they designed. When I was looking for a designer, I wanted someone who had experience working on social media apps before. Mastodon was quite a huge project, so I needed someone who worked on something similar. One reference told me they had used an app designed by Lickability before. I looked at their website and saw their work on other social media apps. I liked what I saw in their portfolio, so I decided to engage them.

Our investment has been around $125,000.

We started working together in February 2021, and the engagement is ongoing.

The reception of the apps has been positive, and their ratings on Google Play and the App Store serve as a metric for how well-designed they are. Although the design may only be a part of the high ratings, the apps are designed truly well.

I haven’t set hard deadlines for Lickability, except for the initial launch. They meet my timelines, and our progress has always been steady and appropriate to our requirements.

Their quality is right where it needs to be.

No, there aren’t any.

Provide a clear scope of your needs, communicate your taste and style, and tell them your preferred design direction. Overall, communicating clearly helps you get the best results.

I’m the CEO of LoopGolf. We’re building a digital wallet for the golf space. Through our product, users are able to link a credit or debit card, fund their wallets, and participate against their peers in different games specifically built for golf.

We had an idea of what we wanted to build. We had the interface design already, but we needed an engineering team to bring the wireframes to life.

Lickability was our development shop. We initially worked with the business development team on the discovery phase. We discussed the project scope to get an understanding of the potential cost. Then, our first engagement was to write user stories to understand what each wireframe would do and how customers would interact with that frame. Lickability asked the questions we hadn’t thought about and helped us with all the customer phases of each frame.

Andrew (Partner) was the lead engineer, and we worked with two other teammates. Additionally, they brought on another shop to help with backend development for the product.

We spent over $700,000.

We started working with them in February 2022. They completed our MVP in August 2022, and we’ve continued to work with them in a more limited capacity ever since.

We have 2,200 downloads and a 4.5 rating in the App Store. Also, we’ve processed over $70,000 in gross payment volume, since it’s a digital wallet.

They were great on all fronts. Although we came in at the high end of the budget, it was due to the complexity of the project and scope creep. Lickability set proper expectations and estimated well how long it’d take to build certain features. Ultimately, we hit the timeline we targeted.

Their engineering rigor and ability to code and handle complexity were outstanding. Also, their communication was really strong. The team didn’t put on any fluff; they were just straight shooters. They told us where they thought there’d be problems and provided clarity throughout the whole process.

They were on the more expensive end, but we got a pretty good value. Other shops quoted us well above what Lickability did.

Having a good idea of what you want to build is obviously helpful for all parties; the more you can go to them with a fleshed-out idea, the smoother the project will go.

I'm the executive director of product for The Atlantic. I oversee the team that's building our mobile app.

We had had a mobile app for several years, and we decided to redesign and relaunch a new concept for the app. We engaged with Lickability to completely rewrite the app and its functionality.

Lickability developed our mobile app in native iOS code using Swift. They rewrote the app from scratch, focusing on key features that differentiated us from our competitors. These features included a screen showing a curated look at five stories our editors select as the day's must-reads. Additionally, they added functionality for users to access our crossword puzzle. Users could also save articles to read offline and download magazine issues.

We worked with a core team of 3–4 people from Lickability. Brian (Partner) was our main point of contact, and we also worked with Matt (Partner), Thomas (Account Manager), and Jillian (Project Manager).

Our former product lead had worked with some of the Lickability team earlier in their careers. When it came time for us to develop a mobile app, he leveraged that previous relationship because he knew the quality of Matt and Brian's work and their understanding of news apps in particular. Although we evaluated other providers, the team's knowledge and experience helped seal the deal.

We spent around $1.5 million–$2 million.

We worked together from March 2017–March 2022.

With the app Lickability built, we saw an increase in downloads, active users, and active days per month from those users. We have much more activity compared to the previous version of the app. While the previous app had some loyal users, they weren't a very large group, and their engagement wasn't growing. With this app, we've seen growth month after month. We haven't had any month where engagement has dropped, or our active users went down. Overall, the app has been a great growth product, and we've been very happy with the engagement results.

They were great at project management. We relied on them entirely to write implementation and bug tickets. They fully owned the Kanban board we had on GitHub and managed the progress of the work. We mainly communicated via Slack.

I was struck by how Lickability approached our relationship like a partnership rather than a client-service relationship. When we discussed new features, enhancements, or bug fixes, they were never just asking what we wanted to do. The team would engage in the conversation with ideas and suggestions. They were constantly looking for opportunities to improve the UX and ensure we met expectations around best practices in the news app industry.

No, there was nothing unsatisfying about our partnership.

The best partnerships are those where someone is looking for a thought partner. Although I'm sure Lickability would work fine with different arrangements, their tools are best used to help define the product experience and execute it. I would recommend them to companies that want to leverage the team's subject matter expertise in best practices in the mobile app development and news spaces. That focus would lead to the most fruitful partnerships.

I’m the founder of Aloe Bud, a self-care reminder app for iOS.

I had an idea to create a mobile application but didn’t have the technical skills that were needed to develop it. I reached out to Lickability to create a beautiful and fully functional iOS app that could send push notification reminders to people’s devices whenever they set them up.

Lickability worked on the UI/UX design and set me up with an affiliate designer that wasn’t part of the internal team. I also worked with another artist to create the icons that are used throughout the app. I developed the app concept and the design of how it would work. The staff took that concept and translated it into Swift — which is Apple’s programming language — and made the app available to download on the App Store.

I worked with Matthew (Partner), Jillian (Project Manager), Thomas (Account Manager), and Michael (Senior iOS Engineer).

I had a previous relationship with Matthew, and I reached out to them knowing that they had a development company. I talked to the team about the idea to see if they could help me bring it to life.

My business invested between $50,000–$75,000.

We started working together in April 2017, but development didn't start until June of the same year. We wrapped up and released the first iteration of the app in March 2018. We’re still technically working together, we just don’t have any ongoing projects right now.

Our biggest metric is the fact that the app has about 2 million downloads. We haven’t done any advertising and it’s all been organic. This clearly shows that Lickability has built a great product that has attracted so many people to find it and try it out.

Lickability was great at being organized and meeting deadlines. Their style of communication is awesome; there was never a time I had to follow up with the team. They created a dedicated Slack channel for us so we could talk to each other daily and check in on what was going on — it was nice to have that space to stay updated.

I very much enjoyed how they were professional yet easy to work with and talk to. They have the amazing ability to make app development feel like a fun experience.

I don’t have anything for them to improve. They’re pretty great.

Come to Lickability with a clear and well-thought-out idea. The more documentation you have, the easier it will be for the team to start working right away and turn your idea into a reality.