Development – Markethon

Project A724

Daniel — Mon, 25 Nov 2019 16:05:55 +0000

Category

iOS + Android | Education + Lifestyle

01. The Challenge

A Associated Students UCLA (ASUCLA) is the student-controlled, non-profit organization that has provided retail and student union services to the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) since UCLA’s establishment in 1919.

With more than 50 ASUCLA-run eateries, shops, and other facilities on a university campus used by more than 40,000 registered students, it can be challenging to understand all the available options. To address this challenge, ASUCLA wanted to build a mobile app to help students discover and explore the full range of retail, dining, and study options on campus.

With just two more months before incoming freshmen were to to spill onto campus for orientation activities – the best opportunity to promote the app — ASUCLA considered 10 different vendors and decided to partner with Markethon, the only vendor they could trust to deliver on schedule.

02. Working Process

We aligned the app’s user experience with how actual UCLA students think when they’re ready to do something on campus besides attend class. (“I want to grab some lunch on North Campus before my Art History class.”) Within the app, ASUCLA facilities are organized by types – “eating”, “shopping”, and “spaces & services”. Eateries are organized by relative location on campus (North, Central, and South), and other services are organized under intuitive subcategories as well.

DISCOVER & GO

Clicking on any listing brings up a detailed view with more information, including real-time store hours and location. Once on a detailed view, users can get real-time directions to any facility through Google Maps or Apple Maps, seamlessly.

03. Perfect Result

Up against the clock, we thrived — designing, developing, and deploying ASUCLA’s app in just two months.

The timely completion and overall product quality allowed ASUCLA to beat its forecast for downloads, and many students have given the app rave reviews.

Project A482

Daniel — Mon, 25 Nov 2019 16:03:34 +0000

Category

Internet of Things (IoT) | Telehealth

01. The Challenge

K Kedalion Therapeutics is a med tech startup whose mechanical eyedroppers with AcuStreamTM technology allow easy and accurate administration of topical drugs to the eye.

To further enhance dosage compliance and user satisfaction, Kedalion wanted to add telehealth features to its device, which would allow patients and caretakers to automatically track dosage times, dosage amounts, and receive real-time treatment reminders. Kedalion asked Markethon to create a companion mobile app that would provide this IoT/telehealth functionality.

02. Working Process

Immediately upon project kickoff, our engineers moved quickly to obtain a hardware sample of the eyedropper. Our development team worked directly with the Kedalion hardware engineers to develop the requisite mastery of the device’s API and how to communicate with it via Bluetooth.

The Definitive Guide to Building a Telehealth App

Working in parallel with our engineering team, our UI/UX designers and product team hosted regular collaborative design calls with the client, allowing our designers to quickly dial in the exact screens needed for version 1.0. With that scope clarity, we were then able to provide wireframe designs in just a “half sprint” (one week) and complete hi-fidelity designs shortly thereafter. The frictionless and intuitive user experience our team designed quickly gained the client’s approval, allowing us to move right into development.

03. Perfect Result

Against the clock, our team was able to hit full stride, creating and deploying the telehealth app for Kedalion within three months of project kickoff. The Kedalion team loved the streamlined and intuitive experience we built and is now proudly working to get the product to market.

Project A273

Daniel — Mon, 25 Nov 2019 16:02:28 +0000

Category

iOS + Android | Restaurant Mobile Ordering App

01. The Challenge

U Urban Plates is a fast-growing restaurant chain, whose focus on delicious, healthy, and affordable meals “born of goodness” is attracting a legion of passionate customers spanning all the way from the sandy shores of California to Washington DC.

When the Urban Plates team first approached Markethon, Urban Plates was already selling meals on aggregator platforms like Uber Eats and DoorDash, as well as through their website. However, the Urban Plates team believed that the only way to deliver a true digital restaurant experience — capable of maximizing customer satisfaction, retention, and restaurant profitability — was to provide a dedicated and custom-built mobile ordering app.

For this, they asked Markethon to: (1) design and build them a mobile app on iOS and Android, and (2), connect the app with their existing backend POS, menu, delivery, and payments systems.

Importantly, the app needed to fully embody the wholesome goodness and distinctive brand identity Urban Plates had cultivated over the past few years.

02. Working Process

We understood that a key to this app’s success would be allowing each menu item to shine. That meant large images, a focus on the top-notch, farm-to-table ingredients, and plenty of “room to breathe.”

Urban Plates’ marketing team provided a comprehensive style guide and all the visual assets we needed to create a comfortable, intuitive, and inviting experience worthy of the Urban Plates name, and our designers did the rest.

User Experience Focused on Empowering the Diner

Our UI/UX designers challenged themselves to make the ordering process simple and fresh — while still providing the deep order customization Urban Plates’ customers expect. Users of the app are able to easily customize orders in a multitude of ways, including: specific allergies, dietary preferences, choice of protein, choice of sauce, salad dressing options, steak preferences (e.g.: well done), and bread preferences, for example.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we quickly pivoted to add support for curbside pickup – complete with screens to capture vehicle information — alongside the standard delivery, takeout, and dine-in ordering options.

Additionally, we built into Version 1.0 features to “favorite” menu items, search and select different restaurant locations, save and edit payment methods and delivery addresses, and more, with a whole host of additional enhancements slated for future release.

Back-kitchen Systems and Development

Meanwhile on the development side of things, our engineers had immersed themselves in a deep dive with Urban Plates’ existing backend systems, such as Novadine, the ecommerce backend Urban Plates was already using for its website orders. The app’s success would require full mastery of these systems’ APIs, and by extension, the POS, payments, and other integral systems.

Our team worked directly with various 3rd party vendors on a weekly basis to master the necessary API controls. Once this critical mastery was achieved, we were able to smoothly and systematically implement all the critical backend functionalities: menus, locations, ordering, payments, delivery (DoorDash), and so on. Working in parallel, our frontend developers focused on delivering snappy and stable application performance.

From there, we initiated the final phase of QA testing and polished the app for its impending release.

03. Perfect Result

Since its launch on the App Store, the Urban Plates app has been downloaded by thousands of eager customers and has been receiving rave reviews from diners. The Urban Plates team was proud to unveil its very own digital restaurant experience and was especially thrilled to hit the mark for its discerning customer base.

Project A397

Daniel — Mon, 25 Nov 2019 15:58:31 +0000

Category

iOS + Android | Ecommerce

01. The Challenge

A An esteemed component company of the S&P 500 (NYSE: PNR) with more than 10,000 employees worldwide, Pentair is a global leader in water treatment. Pelican Water, one of Pentair’s largest residential brands, approached Markethon with a mission-critical ecommerce project.

Pelican Water asked to build a mobile app to help its residential customers quickly scan and ID their products, access pertinent videos and other user resources, and purchase water filters and accessories.

02. Working Process

In order to make the app user-friendly and approachable, we built NFC (near field communication) scanner capabilities into the app, so that the app could easily identify the exact product the user had purchased and automatically offer curated videos, FAQs, manuals, accessories for purchase, and other resources.

Because this scanner feature was so critical to supporting Pelican Water customers, Pelican Water requested that we deploy an early version of the app, with just the ability to scan NFC tags. So, we quickly developed a working proof-of-concept and deployed it to the App Store.

Our teams then moved into the design and development of the ecommerce portion of the app. Because Pelican Water already had an ecommerce website, our backend developers were able to piggy-back onto an existing (and very robust) product database. With some back and forth with the Pelican Water technical leads, our team quickly integrated the mobile ecommerce front end with the existing backend and performed automated and manual QA testing to ensure an excellent user experience. Development time was kept to a minimum because our developers opted to stay with the existing ecommerce system’s PHP framework, minimizing the amount of recoding needed.

Finally, we incorporated mobile pay options with Apple Pay and Google Pay to make mobile ordering as frictionless as possible.

03. Perfect Result

Since deploying the mobile app, Pelican Water has seen significant increases to average order size (AOS) and order frequency (or repeat purchasing). Customers have gravitated to the easy mobile pay options to replenish their filters, and user feedback has been refreshingly pristine.