OUR STANDARDS
What we mean by top 3%
Anyone can push pixels. These are the 17 standards every designer in your team holds themselves to. On every project, on every call, every single week. It’s how we earn the right to be trusted with your product for years, not months.
STANDARD 01
We never present work and ask “what do you think?” first. Every screen, every layout, every color choice comes with our recommendation and the reasoning behind it. If you redirect us, that’s healthy collaboration, but you’ll never catch us waiting to be told what’s right. The standard is: recommend, explain, then open the floor.
STANDARD 02
We explain the why behind every decision.
We don’t just show the work. We connect every choice to your business goals, your users’ behavior, or established UX principles. You should leave every call slightly smarter about design than when you joined. We educate your team and train their design muscles week after week. That’s how trust that lasts years gets built.
STANDARD 03
We act as senior product leads, not order-takers.
Nobody needs to organize our work for us. When new ideas surface mid-call, and they always will, we acknowledge them, park them in the backlog, and protect the sprint. “Love that idea. It’s going in V2. Here’s what we’re shipping now and why.” We are the guardrail between ambition and execution.
STANDARD 04
No pixel talk without a business reason.
We never discuss a UI change in isolation. A cleaner onboarding isn’t just prettier. It’s a sales page for your product that drives activation. If we can’t articulate the business impact of what we’re designing, we stop and figure it out before we present it. That’s the difference between a designer and a design partner.
STANDARD 05
If a release is stuck, we unstick it.
If a project stalls, we’re the ones who flag it. If a decision is blocked, we propose a path forward and a deadline. If feedback is dragging, we chase it: politely, persistently, always. You should never be the one pushing us forward. Ever.
STANDARD 06
Recommend first, collaborate second.
You have legitimate authority over your brand, your priorities, and your strategy, and we respect that. Our job is to bring expert recommendations and create space for you to sharpen them with your context. The goal isn’t zero pushback. It’s pushback that makes the work better.
STANDARD 07
The most organized people on every call.
Every call has an agenda. Every decision gets documented. Every action item has an owner and a deadline. If you ever have to ask “what’s the status?”, we’ve already failed. We bring order and shared decisions to the chaos of building a product.
STANDARD 08
We make your product beautiful.
There is something irreplaceable about seeing your vision rendered with real craft and taste. Teams screenshot it, share it, show it to investors. Beauty isn’t decoration. It’s a business asset that builds confidence in the product, the brand, and the team behind it. We don’t deliver “good enough.”
STANDARD 09
We live in your shoes every single day.
Every morning we ask: if we were the product lead, would we feel taken care of right now? We don’t wait for someone to tell us something is wrong. We sense it, we check in, we anticipate needs before they become requests. We think like founders, not employees.
STANDARD 10
We design for your end user, not just the room.
Beautiful work is the baseline; it’s what gets us in the door. What makes us irreplaceable is that we care about your end user as deeply as you do. We ground decisions in real behavior, real pain points, real data. At least once per call, the conversation touches the actual human who will use the thing we’re designing.
STANDARD 11
We help the whole team move forward.
We don’t limit ourselves to assigned tasks. Marketing struggling with a visual? We jump in with ideas. A developer wrestling with a layout? We offer a pairing session. We constantly look for where value can be added, and we create our own todos.
STANDARD 12
We fix the time and flex the scope.
“We’ll ship it when it’s done” is a lie that kills projects. Every project we run is 2, 4, or 6 weeks, never longer. Short deadlines force the hard conversations about what actually matters. We don’t reject ideas; we postpone them. Ship the thing, learn from it, then decide what V2 deserves.
STANDARD 13
We make you feel safe.
The most underrated thing we sell isn’t design. It’s peace of mind. If there’s a risk, we name it before you notice. If there’s a delay, we communicate it with a plan, not an excuse. You should never have to chase us for a status update, and you should sleep better at night with us on your product.
STANDARD 14
We turn pressure into progress.
Projects hit walls, deadlines loom, teams get stressed. In those moments we steady the room, not by pretending everything is fine, but by reframing what’s actually happening and offering a path forward. Anyone can push pixels when things are calm. Clarity under pressure is what earns long-term trust.
STANDARD 15
The design call becomes your favorite meeting.
Amar, CEO of ZenMaid, put it plainly: “The design calls are something that I really look forward to in a way that I didn’t before.” Our calls are workshops, not reviews: co-creating, jumping between zoomed-out strategy and pixel-level craft, and consistently moving the product forward. If a product lead ever describes our call as “just a status update,” we’ve failed.
STANDARD 16
We show up as true in-house teammates.
We share interesting findings, articles, and ideas with your team every week. We engage. We don’t disappear and “just design.” The standard is that working with us feels like having a design team inside the building, not a vendor outside of it.
STANDARD 17
We genuinely want your company to win.
We believe in the companies we work with: the product, the vision, the team. We’re excited to call your customers, meet them, design with them, and innovate. We lead with enthusiasm and high agency: bringing our own vision and ideas and creating impact instead of waiting for permission.
This is the bar. Every week.
Curious how these standards play out in practice? See exactly how we run design weeks, hackathons, and retros with the teams we join.
Leading growth design with growth design sessions to improve activation and first time user experience
SQL Spreads is an Excel Add-In that allows your end-users to easily update SQL Server data using controlled, locked-down Excel documents
Helped them improve their onboarding with a UX audit
Lemlist is a multichannel sales outreach platform with built-in lead database and AI personalization — used by 37,000+ businesses across 100+ countries, hitting $10M+ ARR
Leading design for 3+ years now and helped them scale from $1M to $4M ARR
Scheduling software for cleaning businesses
Leading design for 3+ years and helped team to grow past $1M in ARR
Knowledge Base software for enterprise companies.
Helped team shape core UX architecture with UX workshops
A handheld 360° scanning device and software that captures highly accurate floor plans in minutes for renovation, architecture, and spatial professionals.
Helped team shape core UX strategy with UX workshops
An AI-powered email assistant that automatically organizes your inbox, drafts replies in your voice, and helps you achieve inbox zero while saving hours each week.
Led redesign of core features to to get rid of UX debt and unblock growth
An all-in-one pet care management platform that centralizes scheduling, communication, pricing, and reporting so pet care businesses can run smoothly and grow revenue.
Helped define UX strategy and architecture for their annual survey the core of their product
Leading analyst firm in the developer economy used by Facebook, Microsoft, Intel and other top tech brand.
Led their design for 2 yeas and helped them exit
Enterprise video hosting platform that makes corporate comms simple and secure.
Helped them improve their onboarding with a UX audit
Create and send stylish e-scard filled with messages, GIFs, photos & videos. Used by teams in Amazon, Booking, Sony and more.
Used by 64.468+ businesses in The Netherlands
Biggest and most popular online company incorporation service in The Netherlands.l
Used by 1,000+ companies like HubSpot, AirBnB, Amazon and Facebook
Turns any website into data with undetected scraping technology.
$1M+ generated in mentorships per year
A marketplace of trusted source to find highly-vetted mentors & industry professionals to move your tech career ahead.
$500K+ of ARR with $8M of seed funding
A SaaS that helps real-estate lenders protect their collateral.
Backed by the founders of WeTransfer, JustEat, and TreatWell.
Centralized governance tasks and communication for Venture Capital firms.
Used by 1M+ businesses in 190+ countries
Automate DM conversations in Instagram, Messenger & SMS.
Used by 100.000+ businesses in The Netherlands.
EU-based contract management and e-signing tool for SMBs
Trusted by marketing teams in Freshbooks, Drift and more.
Link building and local search solutions for SEOs and Agencies.
Used by thousands of students in US
Mappd is a B2C SaaS that provides students with the roadmap to help them navigate their premed journey. From the people who brought the Medical School Headquarters.
Most popular indie SaaS community in UK with $10k+ of MRR
The #1 founder community supporting you to ramen profitable, and beyond. An active Slack, remote co-working, expert AMAs, in-house mentors, masterminds, discounts and much more.
Mid-stage niche SaaS for moving companies
Oncue is a full-service moving company operating system that helps moving companies grow with innovative technology and an on-demand booking service.
Used by teams like Paddle and UserZoom
Sales Enablement platform with the high adoption and low cost of maintenance.
$500K+ of ARR with $8M of seed funding
A SaaS that helps real-estate lenders protect their collateral.
Led redesign of core features to to get rid of UX debt and unblock growth
An all-in-one pet care management platform that centralizes scheduling, communication, pricing, and reporting so pet care businesses can run smoothly and grow revenue.
Used by teams like Paddle and UserZoom
Sales Enablement platform with the high adoption and low cost of maintenance.
Used by 64.468+ businesses in The Netherlands
Biggest and most popular online company incorporation service in The Netherlands.l
Backed by the founders of WeTransfer, JustEat, and TreatWell.
Centralized governance tasks and communication for Venture Capital firms.
Helped team shape core UX architecture with UX workshops
A handheld 360° scanning device and software that captures highly accurate floor plans in minutes for renovation, architecture, and spatial professionals.
Helped team shape core UX strategy with UX workshops
An AI-powered email assistant that automatically organizes your inbox, drafts replies in your voice, and helps you achieve inbox zero while saving hours each week.
Leading design for 3+ years and helped team to grow past $1M in ARR
Knowledge Base software for enterprise companies.
Helped them improve their onboarding with a UX audit
Lemlist is a multichannel sales outreach platform with built-in lead database and AI personalization — used by 37,000+ businesses across 100+ countries, hitting $10M+ ARR
Used by 100.000+ businesses in The Netherlands.
EU-based contract management and e-signing tool for SMBs
Trusted by marketing teams in Freshbooks, Drift and more.
Link building and local search solutions for SEOs and Agencies.
Used by 1M+ businesses in 190+ countries
Automate DM conversations in Instagram, Messenger & SMS.
Used by thousands of students in US
Mappd is a B2C SaaS that provides students with the roadmap to help them navigate their premed journey. From the people who brought the Medical School Headquarters.
$1M+ generated in mentorships per year
A marketplace of trusted source to find highly-vetted mentors & industry professionals to move your tech career ahead.
Mid-stage niche SaaS for moving companies
Oncue is a full-service moving company operating system that helps moving companies grow with innovative technology and an on-demand booking service.
Most popular indie SaaS community in UK with $10k+ of MRR
The #1 founder community supporting you to ramen profitable, and beyond. An active Slack, remote co-working, expert AMAs, in-house mentors, masterminds, discounts and much more.
Helped define UX strategy and architecture for their annual survey the core of their product
Leading analyst firm in the developer economy used by Facebook, Microsoft, Intel and other top tech brand.
Leading growth design with growth design sessions to improve activation and first time user experience
SQL Spreads is an Excel Add-In that allows your end-users to easily update SQL Server data using controlled, locked-down Excel documents
Helped them improve their onboarding with a UX audit
Create and send stylish e-scard filled with messages, GIFs, photos & videos. Used by teams in Amazon, Booking, Sony and more.
Led their design for 2 yeas and helped them exit
Enterprise video hosting platform that makes corporate comms simple and secure.
Leading design for 3+ years now and helped them scale from $1M to $4M ARR
Scheduling software for cleaning businesses
Used by 1,000+ companies like HubSpot, AirBnB, Amazon and Facebook
Turns any website into data with undetected scraping technology.
