Mobile App: Pet Tech | RUBICON

Why does the client believe in RUBICON?

“They’re a friendly, young and dynamic team. RUBICON has delivered what was expected on time and on budget. The mobile app, while not live yet, has received positive feedback from those who have seen it.”

(CEO, Pet Tech Company)

THE STORY & HOW IT ALL BEGAN

In August 2017, RUBICON began collaborating with the client to support their mobile app development efforts and bring their business idea to life. It’s been over a year and together we’ve developed an iOS mobile app and a UX/UI design for the client’s product. To this day, we still work together to ensure growing success for our client.

Who is the Client?

The client is a startup based in London, England involved in the pet tech industry. The client’s goal was to create an efficient mobile app for pet owners to monitor their pet’s health and activity digitally.

The CEO, an expert in the commercial vet world, along with his team had the idea of creating a mobile app to strengthen pet care across the UK and internationally. The idea was for pet owners to be able to monitor their pet’s health through their phones. The creation of a product that would be in conjunction with a mobile app that would track and monitor the daily behaviour and activity of consumers’ furry friends: cats and dogs. Therefore, through the device and app, pet owners would be able to care for their pets efficiently.

Client’s Initial Product & Request

The client had an initial product which included a small pet worn device that would attach to the collar/harness and monitor the pet’s activity and health. The device would then be docked to a charging device that would collect the pet’s data and display it on the mobile app. Their goal was to display daily pet activity, rest patterns, and recovery on an accessible app that was focused on maximising usability and the user’s experience.

THE CHALLENGES

The client wanted the products and mobile app to produce both specific and complex information about the pet. The pet worn device is small in size but it needs to retain and analyse a lot of data due to the pet’s fast and irregular movements. The challenges were:

1. How would such a large amount of data points be communicated, analysed and then shown on the mobile app to consumers?
2. How would we approach the UX/UI design of the application in order to provide consumers with a user-friendly and functional app?

SOLUTION & PROCESS

Our team created a successful mobile app and an efficient solution for the processing and communication between the hardware devices and app. After consulting with our client, we began with the development process. We offered both technical and product advice, gave our input in the decision-making process and worked together to solve the problem.

Client’s Redesigned Product

During the development process, we did a pivot for product design. The client changed the initial function of the products. We had to build the app in accordance to the client’s new product. Currently, the charging device is no longer used to collect data and its only function is to charge the pet worn device. The pet worn device collects the data and sends it to the mobile app to be decompressed, processed and displayed. Therefore, the mobile app gained more functionality and became the main feature of the product.

Functionality

After moving forward with the development process, we decided to create the app in iOS due to the consumer market. We implemented Bluetooth low energy as the communication system used for transferring data due to its compatibility with iOS. This was the best communication system for our client due to its reduced cost and power consumption, meanwhile being able to maintain a similar range of communication. Along with our UX/UI team, we were able to create a functional mobile app that would communicate with the pet worn device through Bluetooth low energy and clearly display the pet’s health activity. Afterwards, we rapidly prototyped the iOS mobile app, ran design sprints and consulted with our client before we were able to move onto programming where we built the final mobile application. Lastly, we tested the app until we were fully satisfied with the results.

RESULTS

After an extensive amount of planning and designing, our software development team and UX/UI designers created a fully functional, user-friendly app for our client. We successfully paired the mobile app with an efficient communication system. Our client’s business plan came to life and they are now positioned in the pet tech market. Today consumers are able to monitor their pet’s health conveniently through their phones — how simple?

TECHNOLOGY STACK

• Swift
• Carthage
• Alamofire
• RxSwift
• Core Bluetooth
• Fabric
• Firebase Analytics
• Fastlane

PROJECT SCREENSHOTS

INFORMATION

Region: London, England
Industry: Pet Tech
Type: Startup
Duration: Ongoing since August 2017
Staff: 1–10 employees
Project: UX/UI & iOS app

PROJECT FEATURES

• Bluetooth Low Energy communication
• User Onboarding
• Pet profile setup
• Pet statistics and analytics
• Managing device firmware
• iOS-firmware communication testing
• Communication with REST API

Originally published at https://www.rubicon-world.com.