MVST's Collaborative Journey with Akina

Every product we tackle is filled with dedication, passion, and uniqueness. However, some products have grown dear to us - especially when teaming up with such amazing founders, making their vision a reality!

One of our ongoing and most fun products is our work with Akina founded by Florian Haufe and Michele Xiloyannis. ✨

As you can imagine, building digital products for Akina was challenging but that didn't stop us! - Instead, we collaborated with Akina to develop groundbreaking digital products that synced with their vision and helped them reach new milestones.

So, you probably wonder what 1.5 years of teamwork looks like. Here's a quick sum-up of what we achieved in this exciting time.

MVST x Akina

When the co-founders of Akina reached out to us, we immediately knew that their vision was something extraordinary - something we wanted to be part of.

Our very first step was to understand their needs and their already existing Maia AI which analyzes users' movement quality and performance when exercising at home making it easier for the PT to give individual feedback.

Once that was done, it was time to unleash the full potential of Akina's idea.

The Product Concept

Creating the right product concept is always a fantastic opportunity for us to combine our expertise with the visions of our partners.

It quickly became clear to Akina and MVST that we place an extremely high value on the customer. For this reason, when collaborating with partners like Akina, we ensure that our dedicated team aligns closely with theirs to create products that exceed expectations.

The MVST Team

Our dedicated team includes a co-founder who brings strategic oversight, a product manager facilitating collaborations between teams, a head designer leading the designers ensuring user experience and an engaging interface, a lead developer guiding technical implementation, and a team of developers collaborating to tackle various technical challenges and bring the product to life.

UX/UI Design

Design is our specialty at MVST! We take special care of the UX Design since Akina is for users of every age. That's why every surface is super intuitive and user-centric.

To get started designers adopted a collaborative approach where we aligned with all stakeholders and took on the role of the sparring partner always challenging ideas till they reach their full potential.

We ensured continuous progress updates in an adaptive manner suiting our partner's needs. This included having weekly syncs for real-time discussions, and async looms to share quick iterations with the stakeholders and later get their feedback. Workshops were also organized to discuss with Akina's team the product roadmap actively, and the feature prioritization leading to setting the MVP scope.

We then moved on to the research and benchmarking stage where a comprehensive map of user needs, pain points, and frustrations among other topics was ready to be tackled with an innovative approach.

With the latter information, we advanced to UX Design and addressed it with the following points:

Information Architecture, embraced by our designers, enabled them to structure the content and functionality of the product, optimizing usability and navigation.

User Flow Diagrams helped us map out in visual representations the various paths users take within the product for a seamless and logical flow as visual.

Low-fidelity to High-fidelity Wireframes encompassing initial rough sketches to more detailed wireframes progressively refined the design to balance functionality with aesthetics.

Interactive Prototypes brought our designs to life, allowing stakeholders to experience the product firsthand and provide valuable feedback.

Early User Testing Sessions conducted in the design process gathered insights and validated design decisions, ensuring alignment with user needs and expectations.

Adaptation to User Feedback - Iterations were made on the design to address pain points, optimize usability, and enhance the overall user experience.

Following UX Design, the focus shifts to key points in UI Design, which include:

Applying branding elements provided by a branding partner, Koto. This is crucial to maintain consistency and alignment with the brand's identity throughout the user interface.

Interactivity and animations enriched user engagement by offering intuitive responses to user actions within the interface.

High-fidelity UI prototyping closely resembled the final user interface design, allowing for realistic user testing and feedback.

Design Systems maintained consistency in visual elements, components, and interactions across different screens and functionalities.

User Testing Sessions allowed us to gather feedback on the usability and effectiveness of the user interface, ensuring it empowers Akina's users of all ages to navigate.

The Web Apps

As soon as the product concept and the design were set up, we were super hyped to get into the actual work: Not one but two web apps were the result!

To master this task, we teamed up with Akina even closer: Our dedicated team worked together with developers from the Akina side while MVST was taking ownership of the delivery. The amazing software engineers did their magic and provided web apps with unique functions and features that amazed both users and our partner.

Ultimately, our goal was to develop adaptable digital products ready to be easily customized to the founders' preferences while ensuring quick and seamless maintenance.

MLOps

In simple terms, MLOps helps streamline the process of deploying and managing ML models in a cloud environment, ensuring they deliver value efficiently and reliably.

And that's exactly what we did! MVST helped Akina with their MLOps to deploy their ML model into the cloud. This was a huge step in the process as it provided various services accessibility to the cloud.

The Website

As time went on, we took the next step and built Akina's website.

Regarding the look of Akina's website, the motto is Clean look with some fun elements. We are proud of the outcome!

We built this website through a multifaceted process starting with planning and understanding the goals and audience as a way to inform its ideation. After the concept was agreed on with Akina, we managed the next steps, from crafting compelling UX/UI designs to meticulous development, ensuring each feature was seamlessly integrated for an intuitive user experience.

Beyond design and development, we prioritized responsive design implementation, and quality assurance to optimize the website's performance guaranteeing its usability across various devices and browsers.

Once launched, we began an iterative process of gathering feedback to continuously improve the experience of Akina's users and therefore achieve Akina's business objectives.

The Mobile App

Last but not least, we are working on a native mobile app for Akina that breaks barriers in the realm of digital health. The world is more mobile and digital than ever - so it was only logical for Akina and us to also offer an opportunity to use their product on mobile devices. We are very excited to see what new goals Akina will achieve with our help.

Our Partner Does The Talking!

Florian Haufe, co-founder of Akina, shares his experience in the ongoing collaboration in this short video: