Acid Tango

A studio that takes products from idea to launch

Acid Tango runs as a studio for digital products. It takes work from the first idea through to launch, or steps in to grow a product that is already in use. Its team brings together developers, designers and strategists, who cover each phase of the product life cycle. The studio says each phase needs different practices, tools and mindsets, and it organises its work to suit each one.

Product design and strategy

Design work covers user-centred design, redesigns, interaction work and improvements to how users move through a product. Strategy work runs alongside development, so that planning across the product life cycle stays connected to what is actually built. The company describes its clients as startups, venture builders and corporate businesses that want to reimagine their digital products, and it presents its approach as one that gives those clients the same team from first sketch to later iteration.

Trive, a case study in vehicle e-commerce

One of the studio's published case studies describes building Trive, a vehicle e-commerce platform in Europe, from the ground up. The platform lets people discover, try and buy a car online. A live video feature lets a user inspect the vehicle from a phone or computer while an expert describes it, and a physical test drive can be requested through a form, with the car dropped off at the customer's location. The case study lists the technology used as Ruby on Rails, Docker, Terraform, WebRTC, jQuery, Slim, SASS and PostgreSQL.

Financing built into checkout

The case study explains that car purchases are normally handled through bank financing, so the team built a customisable financing calculator into the checkout. When a customer asks to buy, the loan request goes directly to the bank with the necessary documentation. The aim is to remove steps from the purchase, and the platform gives dealers a way to show their stock and to offer car customisations, financing and insurance in one online flow.

Iteration after launch

The studio says its work continues after release, with monitoring and iterations that improve a product over time. Its blog, The Lemon Crunch, covers design and development topics, including what a product development cycle involves and what user-centred design means in practice for teams that build digital products.