Summary
For years Softonic has had an app that was just a native version of their current web content. We, as a team, were entitled to review and renew it, providing a fresh aproach to the concept. We codenamed it Softonic for Android.
My work was to create the code and an architecture that was flexible enough to accomodate future changes of concept or pivots. Bring my technical skills to enhance the overall experience and interactions designed for the app.
The final result made it into Google Play.
The project
First of all, we needed to understand that Softonic already had an app on the market. We were just exploring new possibilities and markets, and thus we had to show some potential whitin the app to be successful.
With that in mind, Softonic for Android was done embracing the Lean Startup mindset, with fast prototypes in a fairly small environment, trying to find the best ways, possibilities and concepts.
Prototypes
During the first weeks of the project, the team spent every monday thinking and brainstorming about the idea of delivering an Android app that could help our current web users discover new apps.
We came up with an idea and started to design it. While beginning to adapt the code and the UI accordingly. We then fill it with mock data and ship the prototype every friday to our test users. Doing this process we could get feedback to learn for the next week.
We managed to successfully finish this process 5 times in a row, being the 5th prototype our final product.
Challenges
In order to make it happen, the codebase had to be flexible, extensible and decoupled, so to change the very necessary parts each time. That’s where clean architecture proved to be the best way of structuring the code for our project.
For the sake of speed, the repository pattern was fed only with a single Database DataSource simplifying it.
On the UI aspect of the app, the Model-View-Presented demonstrated to be as fast and adaptable to changes as we needed it to be, even allowing us to make last-minute changes without losing a beat.
Product
Those first weeks allowed us to prove some traction about our ideas and allowed us to develop a more full fledged product. Starting with an MVP to keep it simple, we started to settle things down a bit.
We connected to our API REST to start feeding our app with real content and implement new features. We added push notifications, did some more A/B test with Firebase and everything was being tracked with events in multiple Analytics frameworks.
Result
Our app, was finally not Softonic for Android, it was rebranded as TechMeApp. It became a newbie-friendly technology news app. Easy access to the apps present in any given article and with future plans ahead.
Lessons learnt
The first month of Lean Startup methodologies proved to be an incredibly useful tool to get a great amount of data and insights.
We managed to build, measure and learn from up to 4 prototypes before throwing ourselves to the final idea, which in the end, proved to be a valuable effort.
The team
Developed at Softonic International S.L., Barcelona.
- Product Owner – Ireneu Rodriguez Angrill
- Product Manager – Cecilia Richero Wilson
- UX Researcher – Adrián Fernández Martinez
- UX Designer – Roger Espona Izquierdo
- Android UX Developer – Eloi Navarro Serrano