News Aggregation Platform

PROJECT TYPE
Mobile App

STATUS
Done

INDUSTRY
News and Political App

Introduction


Code Switch Consulting partnered with a client interested providing a diverse array of perspectives and insights through hand curated news and data points. Code Switch had the pleasure of working with this client through a partnership with a separate web development agency! As the project had been underway for several months before Code Switch got involved, the main goal for us was to bring the app to the finish line and allow users to find and use the platform via the iOS and Android app stores.



What needed to be done?


When Code Switch became involved, the app was partially complete, however there was a good amount of attention and care needed to several areas within the app. The need from the client covered several facets...


  1. Work with the client to identify issues and/or bugs found through testing.
  2. Work with the client to identify features that still required implementation.
  3. Create integrations to third party platforms that app used to share localized event and job opportunity based data.
  4. Identify and fix functionality in the app that worked, but did not behave specifically as the client needed it to.
  5. Get the app to a state that it could be published and made available within the app stores.

Challenges


  • This project involved Code Switch becoming involved after multiple developers worked on it previously. This always represents a challenge with having to understand previous developers' code, logic, their intent for how things were put together in the app, and to make sure working items didn't break as we made changes.
  • The existing code had a lot of opportunities for improvement, but one that stood out was the lack of modularity in the code. This meant very long and involved files of code for certain parts of the app that needed to be waded through during development, debugging and testing.
  • The previous development team was not around once Code Switch starting updating the code base, so answers to typical "why" and "how" question that would help reveal why certain decisions were made were not readily available.

Solutions


  • Given the size and complexity of the project, it took Code Switch several months working with the client to unveil what changes were needed, fix bugs within the code base, and to add the features needed to make the platform app store ready. Constant communication and helping the client work through the pros and cons of the features they originally wanted allowed us to iterate quickly and effectively on the remaining code base.
  • In areas where we could not get answers from the previous development team, "start from scratch" discussions were held with the client to fully understand the user flow and features needed within the app. A lot of time this meant fully refactoring code that was already there so we held full control over what it did and how it did it, with the help of the client's input.

Client Result


We successfully got all requested features developed and tested, and were able to successfully deploy the app to the iOS and Android app stores! The client was extremely pleased with the results. As this covered the first version/iteration of the app, the client has plans to add more features and data integrations in the future.


Technologies Used