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Our journey began 15 years ago, in 2005, with the simple vision and drive to build (own) products. We made a bet on mobile being the platform to achieve all this \u2014 a good one, it seems; both intuition and luck playing a role here. Of course, back then it was all about Symbian and Blackberry but it quickly shifted towards the newer iOS and Android ecosystem as they emerged and gained traction around 2008\u20132009.<\/em><\/p>\n At that point, we were a team of 5. The major turning point for us was the release of the iOS App Store which was the beginning and the fuel that took the concept of apps to the mainstream and implicitly changed the lives of developers and agencies, like ours, forever. This led to us further consolidate the team with additional iOS and Android developers (a few of them building apps for both platforms \u2014 something that we stopped doing 1\u20132 years later) and by the end of the year 2011, we grew to 15.<\/em><\/p>\n As building products was our main focus, we realized we needed creative minds to complement the purely technical side of the team, and moved forward with our first non-developer hire in 2011, that being a designer. This addition turned out to be the big milestone in becoming not just a development agency but one that can do design and products on a larger scale. Having such expertise gave us quite a competitive edge locally and regionally.<\/em><\/p>\n Along the path of building more and more projects and collaborating with various startup founders, teams, product owners, PMs we came to the conclusion that we can provide more value and much better results if we have all the complementary services alongside design and development. We understood early on, that this would enable us to simply take a rough business\/product idea and turn it into an end-product that can be released to the market, mostly all by ourselves, without relying on others. So we began our planned but still organic growth process of building out a full-service design and development agency, having additional services like product and project management, backend, web frontend, and quality assurance.<\/em><\/p>\n Next to our design and product-focused approach, we have always strived to put a lot of emphasis on the quality of the work we do. Much of the growth we did over the years was based on this, having the drive to be the best at your own thing and build on top of that. We were lucky to be one of the first local mobile teams and have quite a few really experienced developers and engineers who helped (and continue to help) with sharing knowledge within the team and ease maintaining the delivery of products in a good shape.<\/em><\/p>\n Fast-forward to today: we\u2019re a team of 80 talented individuals with well over 200 projects, products, apps, and a bunch of great experiences, achievements, and failures lessons under our belt. One thing never changed, though \u2014 we\u2019re still pushing hard and continue to be motivated by our core mission of making some kind of positive impact on the lives of people with the help of technology.<\/em><\/p>\n While browsing through your really eye-catching website, one of your company values caught our attention: your product-first state of mind. We\u2019re curious to find out more about the actionable insights that come along with this principle.<\/strong><\/p>\n We always thought of ourselves as more than just a traditional development agency. As with most things, it was a process (and still is) but I think the underlying motivation came from a desire to build products that users actually want and love to use. Products that bring value by solving problems in an easy, delightful, and impactful way, and at the same time help the business grow. For that, we had to have a different approach, an approach where we make the needs of the end-user\/customer our top priority. So, whenever someone on a project or team has a decision to make, we ask \u201chow does this ultimately help the user?\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n Along the years we have forged our processes and tools to encapsulate this way of thinking, which resulted in:<\/em><\/p>\n \u25cf Having a separate design team that can explicitly focus on the product and the experience it brings. Topics like how we can simplify the usage of the product, how to make it helpful, intuitive, engaging, efficient, aesthetically pleasing, but also how to make it last and have the users return time after time.<\/em><\/p>\n \u25cf Building a project management team that can not only handle the project management processes and methodologies but also provide product advice and consultancy to our partners at every step of the product development lifecycle.<\/em><\/p>\n \u25cf Developers and engineers also putting emphasis on being user-centric: for example, not using the latest and greatest software\/tech available just for the sake of using something all-new, but making decisions so that the chosen tech actually helps the end-user.<\/em><\/p>\n \u25cf Having separate product definition and scoping phases together with our partners prior to starting a development phase, be that in the form of a workshop or a 1\u20132 week-long session.<\/em><\/p>\n \u25cf Doing user-testing in the design phase of developing a product.<\/em><\/p>\n \u25cf Launching and having an MVP version of a product as soon as possible (in case of startups), testing it with real users, and adjusting it so it cures their pain-points.<\/em><\/p>\n How do you perceive the local tech ecosystem lately? As a very active company in this industry, you may have noticed things from different aspects.<\/strong><\/p>\n We\u2019ve seen growth on both sides of the tech ecosystem, in the last twelve months both the number and size of agencies and startups have increased. There was a small bump along the way in the recent few months caused by the global pandemic but fortunately, most of the companies managed to make adjustments and changes to bypass all this. For instance, the startup scene so far in 2020 had the same level of activity and results in terms of funding as in the first six months of 2019.<\/em><\/p>\n Once the global economic situation gets back to its normal state \u2014 even if that will be a new normal \u2014 we\u2019ll come out stronger and in a much better position to do even more great things.<\/em><\/p>\n In good and less than ideal times, we are happy to be a part of the local tech scene we have here and to help with slowly but steadily evolving it into something better and more impactful.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Halcyon Mobile is\u00a0Techsylvania: Beyond Borders\u2019<\/a>\u00a0official partner. Learn more about them at\u00a0https:\/\/halcyonmobile.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nowadays, the daily digital experiences through our pocket-sized devices are a part of most of our lives, but going back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3307,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,42],"tags":[15,24,26,51,64,66],"class_list":["post-3312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-techsylvania","category-technology","tag-techsylvania","tag-technology","tag-tech","tag-cluj-napoca","tag-innovation","tag-startup"],"yoast_head":"\n