We’re a bit late in publishing our year in review, but here it is nonetheless. :) As we turned 2 this year, 2018 was a year spent producing some great work, growing our skills as a design team, building a team culture, embracing design mentorship as a team and giving back to the startup community.

Here’s a quick summary:

1. We turned 2 in June
2. Omahdana, Tanamduit, Ayopop, TroveSkin, Jualo, FUNDtastic, Mojoreads —over 50% of our projects this year were in the FinTech space.
3. We had our first design meetup/event called “How to build a product your users would love”
4. We partnered with Skala, an accelerator program in Indonesia, to mentor startup founders with their product’s UX Design
5. Our first Offsite
6. What’s in store for 2019?

Happy birthday to Flolab

Along with Flolab becoming more mature, the team members also grew a year older in Flolab. 3 of our team members completed 1 year of working with us, which goes on to show that we’re building a team of talented designers who love what they do and are learning and growing along the way!

We also had our first design intern work with us for a summer internship completing a project for an app that allows shoppers in grocery stores to do a self-checkout. Benita learned what UX and UI design is all about; while being mentored by 2 of our most talented designers — Rizqi and Nathania.

Having design interns on your team, helps your designers grow by mentoring junior designers, this allows them to learn how to critique designs and guide new talent to blossom into great designers. While the intern simultaneously gains valuable industry experience while working on projects that are part of a larger design team.

Year of FinTech

In the last year, we saw a rise in the number of FinTech startups in Indonesia. More than 50% of our partnerships were with startups in the FinTech space. While they were all trying to solve different problems for their users, there were definitely some overlaps we noticed across the different apps we designed.

Omahdana:
An app for investing money into small businesses looking to raise funds from individual investors. The product serves both sides — investors as well as the business owners.

Ayopop:
An app that helps users pay their utility bills, buy digital vouchers, mobile credits, and data packs. We’ve been working with Ayopop for over 2 years, continuously evolving the product’s design. Last year we worked on a major design overhaul for the app (you can read about it here).

Pinduit:
A product that helps users to apply for an education loan. We briefly engaged with Pinduit to give the product an uplift from their basic MVP which was using a Typeform in its early days for the loan application.

Tanamduit:
An app that helps users buy mutual funds and bonds in Indonesia. We started working on this product in mid-2017 when it offered only Mutual Funds, and slowly started offering government bonds as it entered into 2018. We’ve seen the product grow over a span of one year, and it was an absolute pleasure to work with their product team.

Other Products

TroveSkin:

TroveSkin helps users scan their face for skin issues like spots, pigmentation, acne and skin texture. We’ve been working with the team at TroveSkin over a year and have seen the product grow exponentially in a short span of time. We started with a design overhaul of their MVP and continued to iterate on our designs regularly based on user feedback and user behavior on the apps.

Mojoreads:

We released a brand new mobile experience for Mojoreads mobile apps that gave the app a fresh new look. When we started with mojoreads it was a social reading platform with just a reader and a timeline, over time, there were multiple features added that would help users explore a lot of content on the product. In order to make discovery a primary focus in the product, we re-worked the information architecture of the product in a way that it would be more user-friendly.

Jualo:‍

A marketplace for people to buy and sell their cars, motorbikes and other items. We’ve been helping Jualo with their web product, revamping some of the existing features, improving their usability as well as working on some new features.

How to build a product your users would love

A small effort to give back to the startup community we’re a part of at Block71 — We conducted a design meet up where we presented a few tips and tricks we’ve learned over the years that have helped us design products our users would love. All members of our design team picked out a topic each that fit into their relevant strengths as designers and walked the audience through their stories. You can find the presentation here:

Mentoring startups at an accelerator

It’s a great feeling to be able to give back to the startup community, while at the same time learning about new and innovative ideas startups are building. We helped a few startup founders that were a part of the Skala accelerator program at Block71 Jakarta; trying to help them look at their product keeping the user front and center in the product’s experience and delivering simple and easy to use products.

Our First Offsite

Last year we made a conscious effort to include the right balance of fun and games along with the intensive work hours. Flolab prides itself in being a highly productive group of designers. A secret to our productivity, is to balance the work hours with a good, stress-free break every now and then, that connects all the employees with each other while relaxing by a quiet beach. :)

We took a trip to Pulau Seribu for a weekend and spent our time laying on hammocks, sharing personal stories, cycling, playing basketball and enjoying some delicious food. It was a great weekend with some fun memories with the team. :)
We also continue to have movie nights, game nights, karaoke nights and many such activities that keep us pumping!

What’s in store for 2019?

2018 was a year of growth and building a culture that keeps the team together, paired with some great work. In 2019, we hope to build a stronger team bond as well as continue to deliver work that goes beyond our clients’ expectations. In 2019:
- We’re working on a new Fintech product called FUNDtastic. We’re working on a complete overhaul for their mobile apps. FUNDtastic helps users keep a track of their expenses as well as help them plan their finances.
- We have also had the opportunity to collaborate with Healthcare startup called Diaconmed, which is building a product where users can manage and monitor their health and medical records.
- We’ve already had 2 new employees join us in the new year and can’t wait for our team to evolve and grow with the new additions

Thanks for reading, we hope you have a great 2019!
Ritika Bhagya
UX Director at Studio Flolab