DFUA’18 — CREATING NOT AN ORDINARY CONFERENCE APP
Intro and Idea
An idea to develop a mobile conference application initially came from the expo zone planning. The idea of the DFUA`18 expo zone was to show the visitors modern technologies in action, which should have been interactive and attractive. We started with expo zone vision document, where we defined the technologies we'll be focusing on:
- AI, ML, Deep learning
- VR, AR & Mixed Realities
- IoT
- Smart assistants
Each year we had a conference quest. We decided to combine a new quest with the technologies from the list above. That’s how an AR conference quest appeared, and it was the first step to the DFUA`18 conference application. Then a lot of ideas came in:
- AR Badge map
- Newsfeed
- Schedule
- Log in
- Offline mode
- And more
A lot of defined features were already existing in our progressive web application (PWA) based on the open source project Hoverboard. It supports offline mode, conference schedule, personal schedule and blog out of the box. It was a good point to discuss what our application should include, and what we should keep in the PWA.
Eventually, we decided to have both a mobile application and PWA, and provide our visitors with the benefits of each app.
The original DFUA’18 application idea. Requirements, design and then re-design.
To have a clear vision of what we would like to build we wrote a short document with general requirements and required features.
Description
DFUA open source application which extends GDG DevFest Ukraine 2018 attendee experience during the conference.
General requirements:
- Open-source
- Portrait mode only
Platforms requirements:
- Android
- iOS
Login functionality supports:
- Facebook sign up
- Google sign up
Everything should be synchronized with Firebase.
The list of core features:
- Schedule (Shared Firebase database with the website)
- AR badge map
- AR Quest
We have created a simple application’s screens flow.
During the development process, the amount of features and screens increased, but the docs weren’t updated ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What was added later:
- Live conference Newsfeed, push notifications management, analytics and links management powered by GetSocial SDK
- AR mini-games “Tower defense” and “Save speaker from stupid questions”
- Terms & Conditions screens
- Some additional quest screens: scoreboard, gate passing screens.
- Registration was simplified and was not required for some features like Schedule
The next step was to create a UX and a first visualization (wireframes) of what we would like to build. The wireframing process was iterative and it was regularly updated based on the team feedback.
Since the original design, a lot of changes happened — some screens added, removed, reworked.
After the wireframes were created, the development team started their work. These low-fidelity wireframes were the only wireframes development team could work with at that moment. Therefore they built their own UI vision. Two months before the event the app looked like this:
The first version of the design was not satisfying at all, so after a couple of weeks, it was completely re-designed by Oleh Zasadnyy. A new and fresh design was exactly what we needed. Check it out below.
Technology stack and cross development organization
Two great game development studios (Holistic development agency and Nineva studios) helped us build this app. Application specification was quite big, so we decided to split it:
- AR Quest was developed by Nineva studios.
- Menu, schedule, log-in, AR badge map, AR location stamps, and mini-games were developed by Holistic development agency.
- GetSocial SDK integration was made by Nineva Studios team with the help from GetSocial.
Our project is completely open-source and you can find it on GitHub: https://github.com/Tardis-x/Bigger-Inside
Development environment
Since we had to build a cross-platform application, we decided to use Unity as a development environment because of AR support and cross-platform development opportunities.
Augment Reality SDKs
For the AR part, we used Vuforia SDK, because it supports all the platforms that we needed and leverages AR Core/AR Kit if the device supports it. This helped us reach as many devices as we could for both platforms iOS and Android.
Data store
For the data store was used Firebase, which was already used by our PWA website. The data was already there and it made sense to keep everything in sync.
Newsfeed, application analytics, push notifications management and deep-links management was powered by GetSocial SDK.
Testing
Our QA was our team, but the biggest impact of testing was done by Diana Pinchuk. She found dozens of bugs, gorgeous work! A pixel perfect design review was done by Oleh Zasadnyy.
Usage analytics
We sent our app to Google Play and Appstore just one week before the conference. It took just one day for both platforms to review and accept the app. That was kinda magical.
The conference had 1000 attendees. Here’re some mobile app stats:
- over 500 installations (~50% of all attendees)
- the peak of 493 daily active users
- 79% users were on Android, 21% on iOS
- 7496 push notifications were sent in 3 days
Credits
The DevFest Ukraine 2018 conference application was an ambitious idea, complex and expensive. It would not happen without such a great and passioned team. It’s an opensource project which you will find on GitHub https://github.com/Tardis-x/Bigger-Inside.
Specials thanks to:
Diana Pinchuk — QA goddess and one of the best push-notifications content manager I have ever seen.
Oleh Zasadnyy — for rescuing the design.
Holistic development agency team Oleg Hubal, Nikita Nesterchuk, Vladimir Petiushka, and coordinator Dmitry Bruso — for the development of the main menu, schedule, AR map, log-in, mini-games. Kudos for developers
Nineva studios team — Pixel perfect and the best AR quest development with ad-hoc users support and live bug fixing. Special respect to developers involved:Andriy Marshalek, Ivan Tustanivsky and Taras Leskiv
GetSocial and Vitaliy Zasadnyy — for providing their SDK and help with the integration and application publishing.
Alina Yurenko — for letting people know about the application.
And to the whole DevFest Ukraine 2018 team and visitors for feedback and testing of the application.
