Insta!: On Demand Delivery

The Project

The project is a food delivery service application for managing food pick-up and delivery order services.

What is the Project About

Insta! enables customers to create order requests using the mobile application, as well as allowing the food store to actively manage the order requests using the web application. The web application also enables the food store to manage their online menu and view important store analytics, like the number of completed and cancelled of the current year, while customers can be updated of the status of their orders through the mobile application, all through the Internet, which promotes ease of access, plus faster and more efficient service experience.

Project Demand

Insta! has a mobile application deployed in both the iOS and Android platforms, and a responsive web application supported by all major browsers. Aside from the front-facing applications, the project also consist of a common backend that is utilized by both applications, which handles the database services and the web and mobile push notifications.

Resolution

The project consists of two front-facing applications, a mobile application for the customer and web application for the store. The customer application was developed as a native mobile application using the iOS and Android platforms, with the integration of the Facebook social application which enables the customer to sign-up on Insta! using their Facebook accounts. The store application was developed primarily using the AngularJS Framework with HTML, Javascript, and SASS. Both application utilize a common API/Backend developed through the Django Rest Framework and Python, which also manages the real-time push notifications both for web and mobile using the Google’s Firebase platform. The projects also utilizes the Twilio API for managing email-based notifications

Project Duration

A total of 6 weeks was spent for the Phase 1 development of the project, from the last week of August 2016 to first week of October 2016. Currently, maintenance and improvements are still on-going for the current project phase.

Conclusion

Overall, the project was very challenging since it involves three separate major components (API/Backend, Web, and Mobile components) that are dependent on each other. This required a critical understanding of the project description and goals, proper system architecture and flow, and efficient time and task management, which was made possible through the cohesion and proactivity of the project team, as well as the cumulative skills and expertise of the different technologies that were involved. The introduction of new technologies, including the Firebase platform, also added to the challenge and the team learned a lot from it, but was not necessarily a hindrance as the project was completed and delivered on schedule.