The app's efficiency
Boost your company
ethics with a correct
name pronunciation!
Dr. Praveen Shanbhag Founder & CEO, NameCoach Inc.
The client
2014 was a pretty dynamic ride: sudden drops in oil prices, drones are applied in various scientific and technological fields, and new Apple goodies just boomed into the market. For JetRuby, it was a year filled with exciting and engaging projects.
For one, we've had a very non-standard and creative project called Namcoach. The client was a startup owner, and as he demonstrated to us his raw product prototype, he clearly stated all of the desired product features.
He wanted to be a unique application that will help others
with the correct name pronunciation.
The digital app will provide an extensive database of various audio name pronunciations that will promote corporate/university diversity and equity. Thus, solidifying and motivating your working team or students at work with a simple yet ambitious concept as a "Name Coach." Our team got inspired by this
Fast Facts
About JetRuby Integration
BEFORE
- The poor performance of the hosting server, making it complicated to use the app.
- No service for quality audio examples of proper pronunciation.
- Lack of understanding of the future product vision.
- There was no clear brand identity for the given product.
AFTER
- The server is capable of handling high loads of traffic, improving app performance by 45%
- After the Twilio integration, the user growth rate has increased by 32%
- The business is currently considered to be on a colossal scalability level and it is still growing day by day.
- After creating an entire brand visual element, more people gain trust for the "Namecoach" product, providing 35% of user base growth annually.
Are you struggling with the development process of your digital product? Always misunderstanding some concepts, missing the deadline while the desire to develop a much better application is taking over you? Or do you have lots of great ideas and useful products in your mind, but you are too afraid to implement them since you don't know how to invest your money efficiently?
If anything that you just read relates to your situation or perhaps resonates within you, then you came to the right place. As of right now, JetRuby provides a free consultation for your Product Strategy Development. We'll go through each development iteration that your product will have and give you a ballpark estimate for your current project status during this meeting. So wait no more and schedule up for a free consultation today!
Want to get the same
Let us know what business are you running and we'll tell you how we can assist you!
A foreword about our client
Ms. Brianna is a client coming directly from the USA. She is a very active Forbes contributor on various topics. And just so it happens that the most attractive boards that she looks up to are traveling. Almost all of her life she has traveled throughout the entire world. Alaska, Egypt, New Zealand, Russia, or even Antarctica you name it and she has already been there!
And just as she has been almost everywhere she wanted to push her passion and hobby to the next level. She thought of an online platform where she could share the same feelings she felt during her travel. And also show some of the hidden places that no one has no one heard or seen. That's how she ventured into her idea and started to actively plan out how she would implement it.
USA
Business &
Tech issues
Before we started implementing the MVP state of their idea, the client agreed to go through the Product Development Strategy Session because he wanted to correctly define and prioritize the functionalities necessary to launch the Name Coach app during the MVP.
The client was simply amazed
After the Strategy Session was completed, the client was simply amazed at how we had landed on the hit mark on his business goals and correctly showed a visualized flow of their app's customer journey map. He agreed to pass through the Design and Discovery Phase. Since the results presented to him were only initial ones, he wanted to dive deep into the confident preparation process fully. As he understood, it is better to "measure thrice and then only cut once."
The primary reason
- - - - - - -
why the client wanted to accept and move towards the Design and Discovery phase urgently is that he even wished to see whether his idea was worth a shot. He wanted to verify whether his product idea and the target market demand will find a match between each other.
The client himself wanted to see the next main requirement in the completed version of the MVP was a very reliable hosting server. As his prototype was heavily based on the Ruby on Rails framework, the server platform he used (Thin) didn't meet high load conditions. Meaning that as he has finished making his version of the app, he would test it against a few high load units.
But no matter how much he has tried, no matter how many times he wanted
to reconfigure it, luck wasn't on his side. That's why he has specifically indicated his kind of personal issue. And we were happy that he was completely open with us.
The last challenge presented to our dev team was the lack of tangible audio integration for name pronunciation and messaging service. The client himself has tried numerous ways to implement a voice recording integration for his app prototype. However, the number of attempted trials has far exceeded the number of successfully implemented ones. That's why he decided to let our expert team take care of this and determine which service would suit the best for the client's needs.
Since our other senior developers have already had experience implementing similar functions, they heavily advised us on using Twilio API. This 3-d REST API integration would allow us to solve both of the problems at the same time. Ergo we immediately informed our client about this solution, and we gladly included it in the further development plan.
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Henry Ahadzhanyan
Head of sales at JetRuby
The Development Process
Launching the Design and Discovery Phase
The first step
was to undergo the Design and Discovery Phase. The JetRuby team assisted our client in filling up his Business Canvas Model. It was done to understand how exactly his product can be used in business terms as a whole single unit. Next, we dove into the competitor analysis (product analogs) to determine where and how the "Name Coach" will provide value and uniqueness to its clients.
After this
high-level market research was done, the client could see that most of his potential customers were concentrated in the universities (professors) and the big corporate and enterprise companies (managers).
The third step
involved the development of the user story map and the outlook of the app itself. First, our business analyst drew how the identified user types (admin, regular user) could interact with the app itself. Secondly, our head designer made some wireframes and graphical sketches of the essential features of the app.
Next
we created a set of entirely new and polished branding attributes. Most of them were used in the marketing campaign and the Namecoach platform, which ultimately turned the targeted customer 360 degrees. After observing the app's smooth and polished design sets, we knew that we hit a landing mark.
After this
we started to draw out the dynamic beta prototype of the app. It included some of the main screen selections, major functionalities demonstration, and the visual interface that users will be greeted with. After a few small corrections, our client was delighted with the given results, and with the complete project plan, he has decided to move forward to the next big step with us and inquired about an MVP.
MVP Phase
We continued developing a product on a back-end Ruby on Rails framework stack during the MVP start, which provided sufficient speed and lots of beneficial practices. Like fully covering the functional code with the unit tests to streamline the entire development process efficiently.
Following next, we implemented a voice recording feature with Twilio API (TwiML). We have integrated a cloud-based messaging service that allows voice recording with a mobile device's help. And with that, we have combined an audio recorder, which allowed you to play and record custom names for your company or educational institution. Also, as a part of the required solution, we have constructed a separate call planning system. We used a state machine and a background processor to ensure confidence in reachability towards the end-users.
We decided to use a Puma to resolve the concurring issues with load balancing and scaling regarding the server choice. This decision allowed us to decrease the size of infrastructure in the budget and scale the server by hosts properly, by slaves (worker slaves), and by threads at the same time. And answering in advance, yes, it is possible to scale the lines in MRI.
During this active development phase, our client has produced several other requirements that we have implemented successfully. Here are just a few examples of them:
Several various ways to register oneself in an event (invitations, registration screen for information terminals, SAML 2.0 Provider initiated flow);
Developed integrations with most LMS providers using LTI 1.1.
Bulk mailing with the ability to edit messages (SendGrid SMTP API)
Our team has implemented different authentication methods (SAML 2.0, CAS)
Scaling NameCoach Platform
After around 1,5 years since the project kicked off and Dr. Praveen has inquired us about yet another technical offer. His digital product has become quite popular across the entire USA. It gained massive popularity when the product should meet its final and the concluding stage: Scaling.
Since the number of clients for the NameCoach platform was heavily increased, and most of the features were running at their maximum level, our dev-ops team performed a horizontal scaling. We were keeping in mind that when we first started to develop the app, our team hosted their main app on the Heroku platform, which by default, allows you to scale your app accordingly. We examined and analyzed their statistics to understand how much the app should be scaled. And just as we started to make several tweaks and changes within the Heroku settings, our team provided a smooth performance of the platform and continuous availability at the same time. In return, that also made considerable advancement in the app's efficiency by 45%.
as our client had?
Let us know what milestones you've encountered and we'll guide you to the correct development path!
The Business Outcomes
During the three years of active development, our company has been working tightly with the "NameCoach" web platform. It became a truly unique digital product that solved social embarrassment or alienation during any social event.
Currently, almost every notable and famous US university is actively utilizing this platform. The list includes Stanford, Haverford, Xavier, CMU, and Northwestern schools. The platform has more than 110,000 active users who feel much more confident, and it is actively growing by 35% annually. As of right now, the application is widely and mainly being used in the USA. It has a broad and extensive database of users with over a million unique registrations inside various companies and universities.
Dr.Praveen has already planned a few other ethical projects to promote diversity in the business and educational fields. As for the project NameCoach, he is currently trying to integrate it into most business fields all across America. Besides, he also wants to release and promote his product on the European
and Asian markets accordingly.
JetRuby has created over 200+ successful startup projects and is continuing to assist and develop solutions for entrepreneurs who are struggling on their own. Whether you are a startup who just can't find a trustful digital agency or you're just afraid of losing all of your money without gaining a good result, we have a service that can help you. Product Development Strategy Session is a free business consultation where our experts will give you a ballpark estimation of your project and put your development process on the right track. Leave a short description of your business idea, and we'll schedule a free call for you!
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