Hummingbirds

Case Study

Creator ecosystem

Client
Hummingbirds

Project Summary
Transition a bootstrapped MVP to an investment-ready platform big brands trust to make an impact in their marketing by collaborating with hyper-local creators.

Services Provided

  • UX Audit

  • UX Focus Sprints

  • Security revamp

  • Roadmapping

  • Custom web app development

  • Custom Meta integration

  • Ongoing support

At a Glance

$10 million+

In investment dollars raised

TechCrunch

featured innovators

100s of brands

trust the Hummingbirds platform

The Client

Hummingbirds, described by TechCrunch as “a female-founded startup that connects hyperlocal content creators with brands that reward them for sharing products with their small and highly engaged communities via social media to juice their marketing.” 

The Situation

Cofounders Emily Steele and Charise Flynn came to us with a bootstrapped MVP product and a vision to scale. Hummingbirds needed to support three audiences: the creators (known as hummingbirds), the brands who work with them, and the team at Hummingbirds HQ who supervises the campaigns and ensures both creators and brands are happy.


While we primarily work with highly regulated industries, a personal referral encouraged us to connect with them—and we’re so glad we did. It was a delightful experience.
As with any startup client, part of the challenge was making thoughtful updates that maximized both speed and return on investment. When you can’t do everything right away, it’s important to choose the most critical pieces—the ones that will generate momentum and fund further improvements.

During our work together, Emily and Charise’s hard work closed seed funding, which accelerated the pace of development and marked an inflection point to adjust the roadmap’s trajectory.

The Solution

Phase 1: Gathering Data

We integrated the platform with Meta to pull content and statistics from Instagram. This was a critical component—post content and engagement data are central to proving Hummingbirds’ value, so we needed a way to automatically retrieve that data in real time.


This required a careful combination of technical expertise (in working with Meta’s sometimes undocumented APIs) and UX work to make the experience user-friendly and guide participants through the signup process. Since some users were already on the platform and others were just joining, we employed a staged rollout: new users were guided through the upgraded process immediately, while existing users were encouraged to connect their social media accounts by a designated date.

This also gave us a chance to use our compliance skills. Meta has security and privacy requirements that organizations must meet to have an approved integration app. We were able to use the same skills that we use for our insurance, finance and healthcare clients to ensure Hummingbirds’ platform was secure and compliant.

Highlights include:

  • Full security revamp to maintain compliance with Meta’s requirements

  • Successful launch and data gathering despite Meta transitioning between API versions during development

  • Automated, on-brand email engine to send weekly campaign recommendations to creators

  • UX research and design to ensure smooth user flow

Phase 2: Gathering Data

We integrated the platform with Meta to pull content and statistics from Instagram. This was a critical component—post content and engagement data are central to proving Hummingbirds’ value, so we needed a way to automatically retrieve that data in real time.


This required a careful combination of technical expertise (in working with Meta’s sometimes undocumented APIs) and UX work to make the experience user-friendly and guide participants through the signup process. Since some users were already on the platform and others were just joining, we employed a staged rollout: new users were guided through the upgraded process immediately, while existing users were encouraged to connect their social media accounts by a designated date.

This also gave us a chance to use our compliance skills. Meta has security and privacy requirements that organizations must meet to have an approved integration app. We were able to use the same skills that we use for our insurance, finance and healthcare clients to ensure Hummingbirds’ platform was secure and compliant.

Highlights include:

  • Full security revamp to maintain compliance with Meta’s requirements

  • Successful launch and data gathering despite Meta transitioning between API versions during development

  • Automated, on-brand email engine to send weekly campaign recommendations to creators

  • UX research and design to ensure smooth user flow

The Results Up Close

Results: In the client’s words

“We are beyond grateful for People-Friendly Tech for their guidance, thoughtful designs, smooth launches, support and every piece that went into the work accomplished together. I cannot say enough great things about the entire team to anyone thinking about or considering outsourcing their tech.” 

Emily Steele
Cofounder
Hummingbirds

The Transition: 
Graduation, Not Goodbye

After one of their seed rounds, Hummingbirds reached a new milestone: they had the capital to bring development in-house. We saw this not as an ending, but as a graduation.

Over the course of several weeks, we worked side by side with their new team—hosting learning sessions, sharing documentation, and answering questions to make sure they felt confident taking the reins. The collaborative spirit that defined our work together carried through to this transition, and it was such a positive experience that it inspired our formal Graduation Program, now offered to help other clients make a smooth and empowered handoff to internal teams when the time is right.

Security and compliance

Hummingbirds knew a secure, compliant solution was critical to achieve trust from brands and social media platforms. That’s why we partnered with them to assess the current state of the app’s security and perform the needed upgrades so they -- and their users -- could feel confident.

A listing of our available services is provided below. We do not share specifics of particular clients’ security posture.

HIPAA Compliance

We’re fluent in HIPAA requirements and design our applications to protect personal health information from the ground up.

From secure authentication flows to careful handling of user data, our team is trained to recognize and respect protected health information (PHI) throughout the product lifecycle.

ADA Compliance

We follow WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines to ensure accessibility is built into every screen we design—not retrofitted later. Our designers and engineers are trained in accessible interface practices, and we routinely test for keyboard navigation, screen reader compatibility, and color contrast to make sure your app works for everyone.

Security

Security isn’t just a checklist—it’s part of our engineering culture. We implement secure coding standards, have every pull request double-peer reviewed, and integrate with trusted identity providers. Our team is trained in secure development practices and routinely collaborates with client IT and compliance teams to meet or exceed enterprise security standards.

What sets us apart

Clients come back again and again because we offer:

  1. Speed of delivery: We offer startup pace, with enterprise quality.

  2. Empathetic UX research: We are skilled facilitators and researchers who will make the process easy for you.

  3. Interdisciplinary collaboration: We emphasize a collaborative approach, bringing together UX, operations, security, compliance, marketing and data teams to quickly iterate on the best solutions.

  4. Onshore development team: We are a fully remote team proudly located 100% in the United States.

  5. Design QA discipline: We QA not only for functionality, but also for smoothness of use and aesthetic beauty. You deserve to be proud of your application.

  6. Security & Compliance rigor: Security and compliance are an integral focus of our training and design from day one.