Helping a New EdTech Company with UX UI Design

At 55 Minutes, we are constantly looking for ways to improve and learn because the more we learn, the more we are able to add value to our clients. We want to be able to show you how we work with our clients, so I reached out to one of our previous clients, HeyHi, an online interactive whiteboard platform, to understand their experience working with 55 Minutes and how the team was able to meet their needs.

Chatting with Yueh Mei Liu, the founder of HeyHi, was a great way to learn how 55 Minutes was able to help HeyHi with their needs. HeyHi engaged 55 Minutes for help with building the foundation or their company, including logo, design, and branding. Continue reading for the full interview!

Q: Hi Yueh Mei, thanks for being here! Can you introduce yourself and tell us  about your background?

A: I was an educator, teaching in schools, heading a Math department. I worked with the curriculum division on math curriculum, pedagogy and assessment for 15 years. After that, I did 3–4 years of teacher training around the world and that gave me good perspective and insights into teachers’ needs and professional development. From there, I started iMath and subsequently HeyHi.

Q: Can you quickly describe what HeyHi does? How old is the company?

A: HeyHi is a platform launched in December 2019. Covid came and we accelerated 10x or more in terms of features and functions to meet teacher’s needs so that they can continue to bring learning and education to their students, because so many countries were in lockdown, schools were closed. So we geared up full force to enhance and accelerate features that teachers were asking for.

HeyHi is a video conferencing platform with a whiteboard so teachers can engage students collaboratively to go beyond screen share and thoughts to allow collaboration.

Q: What needs did you have when looking to engage 55 Minutes?

A: UI UX design as well as branding. As a startup, we knew we produced HeyHi from an engineering angle, it was from a functional angle. We wanted to make sure key functions work — video, whiteboard, etc. — and of course we didn’t have a full time UI UX person, so we engaged 55 Minutes to work on those aspects for us.

Q: How long was the collaboration with them?

A: It was a one year, ongoing process. They worked on our logo and brand identity, website, whiteboard, app, and designed organisation and administration needs for the platform. We had various parts they needed to work on.

Q: Why did you decide to engage 55 Minutes?

A: I’d already seen Wendy’s work ethics and the quality of her work. The price quotation was reasonable, both quality of work and price point made sense for us.

Q: What are some factors you took into account before making your decision?

A: Trust. [55 Minutes] being a Potato company has been around for 15 years and as it is part of a holdings group of credible companies, they would never walk out on us.

Q: What did you like about 55 Minutes and their services during the partnership?

A: We set out milestones and timeline; at the same time, we were flexible enough to make certain adjustments. The partnership was smooth and great. They were definitely very innovative. We would tell them what we like, prefer, and need, and they would be able to come up with a few solutions. They didn’t just come up with one solution, they would come up with two or three options, which shows their thinking process and how they care about the success of the product. It shows that they put in effort to think through our needs and journey as well as the users needs. Our meetings were very targeted, fruitful, and done within two hours.

Q: What specific needs did you have when engaging them?

A: Coming up with a logo, the design, parts of branding, colour palette; these are the foundations, everything has to follow this theme and palette. That’s important. From there, the tone, look, and feel of HeyHi. Then, they worked on “user journey” on the HeyHi whiteboard itself. It definitely looked more appealing compared to the previous version.

The logo depicts a combination of three key aspects of HeyHi — the whiteboard tool, facilitating collaborations, and encouraging communications.

Q: What kind of inputs did you have to give them to come up with all these deliverables?

A: Not so much, as they would suggest the design, the colour schemes. They explained which colour tone shows which type of emotion. Based on that knowledge and input, we decided on the colour tone to use for HeyHi. In terms of user flow, I would provide input on how it facilitates teacher’s use. They were receptive to input and would then provide the details of the experience the users go through.

Q: Can you clarify what exactly you mean by user flow?

A: The way features are being used and how a user is expected to use the feature —eg: either a pop up from this function to the next function, or it is a click through.

The team uses Figma to create their wireframes; this is how it’d looked like for the whiteboard tool.

Q: How was 55 Minutes’ service and the way they work different from other companies that you’ve experienced before?

A: They’ve been very professional. I don’t get the impression that they’re overselling their services. We started from a standpoint of trust. I don’t have to spend time trying to discern their intent. We just get down to work and make adjustments along the way.

Q: Why did you decide to engage a third-party instead of hiring a UX UI person for your team?

A: Our project is not big enough for a full-timer. It’s more cost-efficient. If I had a UX UI designer, I’d end up with a team of 3 or 4. There isn’t one single person who can do all that work. So until the company is big enough to have a team of 3–4 to handle the UX UI portions, it is more cost-efficient to engage a third party.

Q: Do you anticipate any more UX UI needs going forward?

A: I’m pretty sure there will be work coming up with them. We could be having a new suite of features, and everything needs to tie in a line up properly. I see our partnership as a pause, not a stop, but I do see the partnership carrying on the long run.

Q: What was the biggest takeaway/value HeyHi got from working with 55 Minutes?

A: That smooth partnership and alignment in values and ethics. Even though they’re an engaged vendor of ours, they feel like they’re part of the team. We respect each other’s learnings and views. Instead of a vendor/client relationship, we were on a partnership footing—we don’t treat them to be any lesser, we value their professional views. Overall our character and values are aligned.

Both the teams from 55 Minutes and HeyHi work hard but they also believe in building positive working relationships, through food! Celebrating Chinese New Year with “lo hei” right before Singapore’s Circuit Breaker started.

Q: What was the biggest key learning?

A: I think trust and respect is very important. In any working relationship, it is not always smooth, there will be times when we disagree, maybe they came up with three suggestions and we don’t like any. It takes a lot of trust that we are not rejecting out of spite, but we really need more suggestions. And we have gone through that before without hard feelings. If the starting point has trust and respect, then we can take each meeting at the professional level with some human touch.

Coming out of the conversation, I felt that the biggest thing that stuck with me was the level of trust between the two companies. This trust and open communication made the working relationship very strong and thus positively affected the work. If there’s anything you take away from this, it’s that if you need to engage a third party, whether for a collaboration or partnership, the element of trust is crucial to delivering great and effective results; find an organisation who would journey together with you when launching your new product.

You can read more about the project or contact the team at 55 Minutes.

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Tessa is the editor of and a guest writer for the 55 Minutes publication. In her free time, she enjoys reading, doing yoga, and learning languages.