03 Oct 2023
|9 min
From UsabilityHub to Lyssna: The how and why
UsabilityHub has rebranded as Lyssna. Find out why we made the change, how we went about it, and discover our new brand.
Today we say goodbye to UsabilityHub and hello to Lyssna.
In 2008, UsabilityHub started as a simple five second test. Led by co-founders Mateja Milosavljevic, Tristan Gamilis, and Nicholas Firth-McCoy, we've since expanded to offer a wide range of research methods and grown a panel of over 690,000 vetted participants. Today, over 320,000 designers, marketers, product leaders, and researchers use our platform to deeply understand their audience and move in the right direction – faster.
With growth and change comes a need for transformation.
Your brand is so much more than your name and logo. It’s your company, your product, your vision, and how you present yourself to the world. When executed well, a good brand strategy unifies your entire organization, forming the foundation upon which you stand. So it makes sense that with our growth, our brand needed to evolve too. Our name, UsabilityHub, served us well when we were primarily focused on usability testing. However, with an expanded feature set – including interview studies, a growing research panel, and new testing methodologies – we now have a much broader offering and an even bigger vision. This rebrand reflects that evolution.
It was time to take it back to the foundations.
So we spoke with our internal team, connected with over 145 customers, conducted market research, held several workshops, and really dug into who we are, what we wanted to achieve, and who we wanted to solve for.
Key takeaways
Rebrand purpose: UsabilityHub is now Lyssna, reflecting a shift from simple usability testing to a comprehensive research platform including interview studies.
Meaning of Lyssna: The name means "to listen" in Swedish, centering the brand on human connection and understanding.
Core values: The brand is built on six pillars: open collaboration, listening to understand, constant iteration, integrity, solving meaningful problems, and boldness.
Visual identity: The new look features a logo combining a research loop and soundwave, a vibrant color palette, and human-centric photography.
Consistency: While the name and look have changed, the leadership, team, and core product mission remain the same.
Our why
Every company needs a reason for being – a purpose that goes deeper than the product it sells. As Simon Sinek famously shared, it starts with the why. So, why do we exist?
At our core, we've always believed that the best solutions are built with – not just for – the people who use them. That means staying curious, iterating often, and never losing sight of real human needs.
Our solutions were built around this principle. We help our users put people at the heart of solutions so that together we can improve the quality of experiences in the world. The focus here is on human connection and facilitating that in an accessible, iterative, and agile way so that solutions can meet the specific needs, contexts, and behaviors of end users. Whether that's software to conduct this research with your own end users, or access to end users for those who don’t have their own audience to test with.
This is our why – to put people at the heart of solutions to improve the quality of experiences in the world.
It’s about connecting people who are designing things with people who are being designed for, and ensuring that those two groups of people understand each other really, really well. That results in better outcomes.
Matt Milosavljevic
CEO at Lyssna
Our values and personality
As our team grew, so did a sense of genuine care – for each other, for our customers, and for the broader impact of our work. From the way the exec team collaborated, the empathy that was displayed and the genuine care for everyone and their experience in the workplace — it honestly felt like a very special place. From profit sharing and ESOP, to investing in international offsites, and partnering with The Life You Can Save to contribute a percentage of revenue every year to help improve the quality of experiences for people in the world. This is a group of people who walk the talk, and these values are what has shaped our new brand values.
For us, values aren't aspirational statements on a wall — they're the convictions that shape how we work, how we build, and how we show up for you every day.
Lyssna has six core brand values:
We collaborate openly: We’re better together. We use collaboration, transparency, and inclusivity to power our success.
We listen to understand: We listen closely to people. At the heart of our success is a deep curiosity to understand people’s experiences, feelings, and behaviors.
We iterate constantly: We never stop learning. We iterate, test, and repeat to continuously discover new insights and solutions.
We act with integrity: We prioritize authenticity, honesty, and fairness in all our interactions.
We solve meaningful problems: We focus our efforts to address only the most meaningful challenges and prioritize the most impactful solutions.
We are bold: We have the courage, ambition, and bravery to bring big ideas to life.
Beyond values, we also wanted to be intentional about our personality – how we feel to work with, not just what we say we stand for.
Here at Lyssna, our brand personality defines how we show up in the world. These are the traits that shape our tone, our product, and our relationships.
Introducing our new brand identity
A new name
We see listening as the foundation of human connection and understanding. Our new name, Lyssna, means TO LISTEN in Swedish. This is at the heart of our experience research mission.
Our logo
Our new logo is a combination of elements related to our brand and what we offer. The lowercase ‘l’ from Lyssna, the loop of continuous research, and a soundwave that talks to the feedback we hear.
We’ve also refreshed our sub-brand logos for UserCrowd and Five Second Test.
When we started this process we knew we wanted to keep our vibrancy and energy, while focusing on the human side of research. Our new color palette, along with our illustrations, conveys this.
To focus on the human side of research, we have used a serif font for headings, hand drawn textures, hand cut shapes, and people in two different photography styles.
As a software platform, an important part of our imagery is how we depict the platform in our marketing. We wanted to ensure that we stayed true to the UI while highlighting certain features or functionality. To do this we've taken true elements of the UI and greyed out unnecessary sections to show a certain feature or element.
What stays the same
While many things have changed – our name, how we look, and our expanded vision – one thing that remains the same is the team behind our product. The passionate individuals who support you daily, those who strive to build you the best and highest quality product, and our leadership – remain constant.
What’s next
We're thrilled to continue helping you deeply understand your audience so you can create better experiences for your end users. We have some exciting new features on the horizon and we can’t wait to share them with you.
In the meantime, we've also launched a brand new website packed with helpful resources to support your research journey:
We're proud to support teams at brands like monday.com, Klarna, Zendesk, Miro, and Google – and we're excited to keep building alongside you.
We'd love to hear your feedback on the rebrand. Feel free to reach out to us at support@lyssna.com or chat with us in-app. You can also check out our FAQs in the help center.
We're genuinely energized by what comes next — and grateful to be building it alongside you. We're so grateful for the people who use our product, champion it, and connect with us to help make it the best possible solution. Together, we can improve experiences in the world.
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