Icanpreneur Launches First “Accelerator-as-a-Software” Platform, Leveraging Kendo UI for a Seamless Customer Experience
Challenge
Icanpreneur needed a scalable, consistent design system to build a UI-rich, AI platform fast. They required multiple integrated tools with minimal development time and friction, aiming to launch within a couple of months and establish product-market fit shortly after that.
Solution
Icanpreneur's AI platform is built using the powerful KendoReact component library, a custom theme built with Kendo UI and CSS utilities as well as a custom-tailored design system based on the Kendo UI Design Kits.
Result
With Kendo UI, Icanpreneur has achieved accelerated development and reduced iteration cycles as well as a consistent, flexible design with high customization options.
Full Story
Challenge
Before starting any development, the Icanpreneur product team knew they needed to design a UI-intensive application with a wide variety of components. Building everything from scratch would take significant time, so the team had to look for a more efficient way.
The goal was to achieve consistency and appealing UX across the platform with minimum overhead during the implementation. The team also had limited time to validate their product and get to product-market fit and they had the ambitious goal of shipping the product's first version within a couple of months.
The Icanpreneur platform poses some unique challenges from a UI standpoint:
- Multiple small standalone applications, such as mini-CRM, calendar and event scheduler and canvas whiteboard, are integrated into a holistic platform.
- Guided journey experience that had to educate, guide and support the customer without hindering their productivity.
- Non-trivial user interfaces like the Lean Canvas with high information density that includes strong collaboration elements.
With KendoReact, we built a platform that seamlessly aligns with our boldest ambitions.
Vesko Kolev
Founder & CEO at Icanpreneur
Solution
Efficient Development with Kendo UI Utilities and Components
The whole Icanpreneur platform is built using the powerful library of KendoReact components, a custom Kendo UI theme, heavy use of CSS utilities and component classes. To lay the foundation of the platform’s user interface, the team relied on the rich design tools available in the Telerik and Kendo UI portfolio.
Implementing Kendo UI Design Kits
The Icanpreneur Design System is built based on the Kendo UI Design Kits for Figma. This saved significant time from the initial cost of implementing a design system as it provided most of the design building blocks as a component library. As an additional benefit, using the UI Desing Kits facilitated full compatibility between the design requirements and the development components used by the engineering team. The extensive and insightful Design System Kit documentation helped the team get up to speed with the library as fast as possible.
Design System Documentation
Based on the design system, the Icanpreneur team built documentation of all the main components and the typography. This serves as an easy-to-use demo of the components and their capabilities during the implementation, which also speeds up the implementation process.
Custom Kendo UI Theme
The design system became the foundation for building a custom Kendo UI theme. Thanks to the exhaustive CSS file that is shipped as part of the default theme, the process was straightforward.
Result
Faster Development Cycles
Rapid development at both design and implementation levels. As a startup company, Icanpreneur goes through an intensive, continuous improvement process and the streamlined and standardized UI components help to reduce the back-and-forth and the time spent implementing basic components.
Customer support was instrumental in the Kendo UI offering. When speed is everything, the smallest friction can significantly impact deadlines and deliverables. At a certain point, the team hit a limitation in one of the components, which was raised in a support ticket. The issue was addressed in a timely manner with changes in the product, helping the team get the job done.
Design Consistency and Flexibility
Consistent, easy-to-use design elements with room for customization. When making user experience decisions, the Icanpreneur team is guided by what would be most beneficial for the users. In that regard, Kendo UI proved to be an enabler rather than a limiting factor.
The rich customization capabilities gave the product designer and the engineering team the capability they needed to exceed the customer expectations. As an additional benefit, Kendo UI components provided accessibility features that were out of the box, which allowed the team to focus on other priorities.
Smooth Team Onboarding
Documentation and having a design system made it easier for new team members to adapt quickly. The onboarding process is supported by the rich documentation and support service available, as well as the heavy standardization of the development practices.
Building a platform with complex user interactions is no easy task and Kendo UI has proven to be a reliable tool for the product team. It enables them to rapidly implement their innovative ideas in the age of AI, allowing their customers to excel and shine. “With KendoReact, we built a platform that seamlessly aligns with our boldest ambitions,” concludes Vesko Kolev, Founder & CEO of Icanpreneur.