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"result": {"data":{"allArticles":{"edges":[{"node":{"excerpt":"","fields":{"slug":"/work/case-study-sonnen-customer-portal/"},"frontmatter":{"title":"Visualising Energy","order":null,"content":null,"job":null,"photo":null,"slug":null,"cover":"/img/sonnen-web-app-mockup.jpg","lead":"**How to create an app that connects users with the intangible world of solar energy.**\n\n \n\nWhen sonnen turned to Boldare they had only a few months to develop an MVP of their customer portal that would engage its customers with their sustainable power source. Their in-house development team was tied up with other products, and the deadline did not allow sufficient time to recruit new developers and designers.","templateKey":"case-study-page","specialArticle":null,"isNewWork":null,"isNewNormal":null,"service":null,"settings":{"date":"2018-06-05T09:38:10.000Z","slug":"case-study-sonnen","type":"work","slugType":null,"category":"Case Study","additionalCategories":null,"url":null},"author":"Karolina Kołodziej","authorAdditional":null,"box":{"content":{"title":"Visualising Energy","tileDescription":"\"Boldare’s company culture really fits us well, especially their startup atmosphere, their agility, and the engagement of the team members.\" Norbert Baumann, VP Research & Development / Digital","coverImage":"/img/sonnen-case-study-boldare-min.jpg","tags":["ReactJS","MVP"]},"coverImage":"/img/Case_study_-_MVP_for_sonnen_German_green_energy_service_provider.jpg","settings":{"tileColor":"white","textColor":"black","link":"/work/case-study-sonnen/"},"type":"CASE STUDY"}},"id":"cc9ad27c-1e05-5a65-b6b8-fd0fa0fe3340"}},{"node":{"excerpt":"","fields":{"slug":"/blog/how-to-deliver-an-e-commerce-platform-mvp-in-just-6-weeks/"},"frontmatter":{"title":"How to deliver an e-commerce platform MVP in just 6 weeks","order":null,"content":[{"body":"## Executive Summary\n\nWhen [Takamol](https://takamolholding.com/en/) approached Boldare they had just six weeks to build an MVP of an e-commerce platform. The deadline had to be met in order to validate the idea with investors and secure funding for the full-scale product. Within three days, Boldare flew to Dubai for the product workshops, assembled a development team and started work on the product. Following that, the team delivered the product, on time, allowing Takamol to secure investment funding and build a full version of [Tojjar](https://tojjar.910ths.sa/), the eBay of the Middle East. Since then, the full web version of Tojjar and mobile app have been released. The platform has been further expanded by an Boldare development team, new functionalities being added with every sprint.\n\n## Client\n\nTakamol Holding is a publicly-owned corporation connecting the public and private sectors in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In recent years, the Saudi government has been focusing on shifting its economy from petrol-based to other industries, with a strong focus on stimulating the digital economy. Takamol, as a government-owned company, is tasked with supporting and stimulating entrepreneurship, improving the business infrastructure and labour market in the region. Under its [9/10ths](https://910ths.sa/en/) program the company offers a suite of digital products supporting employees, employers, individuals and jobseekers, SMES and the government.\n\n\n\nThe investors were focused on delivering the highest possible ROI under strict timelines and thus they required Takamol to pitch their products in a similar way to how startups pitch to venture capitals. The presentations required a live and fully functional MVP, a product roadmap for further development and a full business plan with KPIs.\n\n## The Product\n\nThe product Takamol envisioned for its 9/10ths program was [Tojjar](https://tojjar.910ths.sa/), an e-commerce platform similar to eBay or Etsy but completely free of charge to buyers and sellers. This platform would enable small businesses and entrepreneurial individuals in the region to leave their brick and mortar locations and establish an online presence. Thanks to Tojjar they would be able to set up online stores, upload images and descriptions of their products, sell online and arrange delivery. Moreover, Tojjar would solve the current issues with online payments and delivery which create a major obstacle for small Saudi businesses wanting to use e-commerce platforms such as e-Bay or Etsy.\n\n## Problem: finding a team who can deliver the MVP in 6 weeks\n\nTakamol had only six weeks from start to finish to deliver a working prototype of an e-commerce platform in order to secure full funding for the product. During the presentation, the prototype had to be fully functional and able to present the entire buyer and seller journeys as well as admin panel functionalities.\n\nTakamol didn’t have an in-house development team for the job and no time to recruit one and still meet the tight deadline. They had bad prior experience with outsourcing, mostly due to the low quality of code delivered. Through the recommendation of Takamol’s Solution Architect the company decided to outsource in Poland due to the high number of skilled and well-trained developers.\n\nThey sent the product requirements to a number of software development companies and invited them to pitch in Dubai in less than a week. They had only two weeks to decide which partner they want to work with.\n\nTakamol required a partner who could assemble a full self-organizing development team within days and deliver the working prototype on time. The date of the presentation for the investors was fixed and there was no room for delays.\n\n## Solution: Product Vision Workshop to limit the scope and a self-organising augmented team to deliver the app\n\nBoldare responded to the enquiry on the same day and was ready to fly to Dubai to meet the Client within days from the initial contact. The Boldare team organized a product workshop with the Client in Dubai. During the workshop, the team together with the Client trimmed down the list of features leaving only the crucial ones for the MVP. This way the MVP could be delivered with the strict timeline. Both parties understood and agreed that refactoring will be needed if the product was to be developed into a full scalable app at a later stage. Although Takamol had never developed product in agile methodology before they were open to try. The client agreed to work in the Scrum framework, which ensured incremental delivery within weekly sprints.\n\nWhile waiting for the connecting flight back to Poland, the Boldare team delivered the final estimates to Takamol and the client signed them off shortly after the plane touched down in Poland. Boldare was the only pitching team who agreed to deliver the product within six weeks.\n\n> We moved away from our previous developer and made the switch to Boldare. After this, our process improved tenfold. They have a much better process with proper scrum, code reviews, automated testing, and a higher engineering quality.\n\n\n\nBack at HQ in Poland, Boldare had already assembled a self-organizing development team: two backend and two frontend developers, a designer, a Business Analyst and a Scrum Master."},{"body":"Takamol’s Product Owner was well-prepared for the job: the backlog was well-defined, his product vision was clear and well communicated to the team, he was responsive and ready to answer the team’s questions and give feedback. The Product Owner trusted the Boldare team with technological decisions. The Boldare team had complete freedom to choose technologies and solutions for problems which occurred along the way - this significantly speeded up the process.\n\nThe initial designs were already prepared by Takamol and the team only had to implement them, which made the process quicker but Boldare team took them to the next level.\n\n> Our projects had a great boost in productivity once we enlisted a full-time designer to be a part of the development team.\n\n\n\nThe Boldare Team in Poland communicated with the Product Owner every day during daily scrum, but also via Slack, Basecamp and Jira. The Product Owner was quick and very responsive in giving feedback and answering the team’s questions.\n\nAt the end of every sprint, the Takamol and Boldare teams met for a review and planning meeting, held remotely via Google Meet. Weekly retrospective meetings allowed the team to quickly eliminate all obstacles and reach the high performance stage quickly.\n\n> \"The e-commerce project had a very aggressive deployment timeline. We had six weeks to deliver a barebones MVP, and Boldare was the only vendor who was willing to meet that deadline. They were successful, delivering our initial feature-set after a six-week period.\"\n\n"},{"body":"## Results: Secured funding for further development and a flourishing business\n\nThe prototype was delivered on time to the client within the scheduled deadline. The Client presented the prototype and secured funding for the product development.\n\nAfter securing the funding, Takamol has continued the development of the product with Boldare and successfully launched the product to the public.\n\nIn August of 2017, there were over 1300 businesses registered on the platform. Currently the platform offers products ranging from children’s toys, handcrafts, art, food, home decor, fashion to health and beauty. Tojjar is now available as a web and mobile app - both developed by Boldare.\n\nThe Boldare team is still working with the client on further development of Tojjar – the collaboration has continued for over two years now."}],"job":null,"photo":null,"slug":null,"cover":"/img/arabian-women.jpg","lead":"With investor funding at stake, **Takamol** had to deliver a fully functional **MVP** of their e-commerce platform within a tight deadline. They needed to find a partner who can consult, develop and solve problems quickly. Boldare team hopped on board and brought to life an online marketplace that has a potential to **revolutionise economy in MENA region**.","templateKey":"article-page","specialArticle":false,"isNewWork":null,"isNewNormal":null,"service":null,"settings":{"date":"2018-06-05T09:20:13.000Z","slug":"case-study-tojjar","type":"blog","slugType":"work","category":"Case Study","additionalCategories":["Digital Product"],"url":null},"author":"Karolina Kołodziej","authorAdditional":null,"box":{"content":{"title":"How to deliver an e-commerce platform MVP in just 6 weeks","tileDescription":"With investor funding at stake, Takamol had to deliver a fully functional MVP of their e-commerce platform within a tight deadline. They needed to find a partner who can consult, develop and solve problems quickly. Boldare team hopped on board and brought to life an online marketplace that has a potential to revolutionise economy in MENA region.","coverImage":"/img/Case_study_-_Tojar_MVP_ecommerce.jpg","tags":null},"coverImage":null,"settings":null,"type":null}},"id":"98547217-caf0-56f6-955f-a615b8aaf688"}},{"node":{"excerpt":"","fields":{"slug":"/blog/transforming-us-politics-with-a-voting-platform-for-concerned-citizens/"},"frontmatter":{"title":"Transforming US politics with a voting platform for concerned citizens","order":null,"content":[{"body":"## Summary\n\nPOLCO team envisioned politics without the noise, with real-time polling, space for debate, and validated analytics. To achieve this goal, Boldare suggested an iterative approach to product design - from a simple prototype to full MVP, and then to a scalable app.\n\nCooperation was based on Scrum, providing a framework for a single team located in three countries, connected by Slack, Skype, Jira and GitHub. Everybody had just one goal - to create the MVP within seven sprints using the best design and development practices.\n\nFollowing the launch of the MVP, Boldare has continued to collaborate on the release of a fully scalable product based on user and market feedback. Finally, a new in-house POLCO development team could take over further work on the app.\n\n## Client\n\nThe current world of politics and policy analysis is disorganized, unconnected, and inaccessible to most people. Meanwhile, policy makers have to spend big, polling their citizens to gauge opinions and even then spend even bigger to meaningfully analyze the data. Thus, a team consisting of individuals who worked at Amazon, Google, the US military and embassies, in the oil industry, at the White House, in banks, hospitals, and in public policy advice decided to create an online tool to remedy this situation: POLCO.\n\nPOLCO is a unique platform that allows people to vote, give their opinions, and comment on policies, while allowing policy makers to gather real-time feedback from citizens. The analytics tools within the app help political leaders in making the right decisions for citizens based on solid data.\n\n## Problem: the UX and UI are unsuitable for the business and user needs\n\nAlthough POLCO had an exceptional and talented team, with vast experience in a variety of fields, they didn’t have an in-house development team. They had managed to create a prototype but they knew that in order to take the product to the next level, POLCO needed an experienced self-organizing team who could work on the usability and interface, as well as gather data, analyze, and develop the software iteratively. Nick Mastronardi, CEO at POLCO, realized that given the need to recruit, train and build such team in-house, time was not on their side. Company COO Alex Pedersen was tasked with finding a suitable partner company for the job.\n\nUser satisfaction is critical for activation and retention and so POLCO kicked off the search for a company not only experienced in delivering exceptional digital products but also with suitable design and development processes. Having worked at Google in the past, Pedersen knew the importance of processes and methodologies to delivering valuable, user-centered products. After careful consideration, they chose Boldare.\n\n## Solution: focus on key feature and iterative development based on real data\n\n### Tests and analysis as drivers for change\n\nPolco had a lean startup approach to both the development of the app; a perfect fit with the way Boldare operates. Across the product development process, Boldare constantly adjusted the UX and made many pivots. The changes were driven by ongoing research and observation powered by a variety of analytics tools.\n\nAfter completion of the first stage of the MVP, POLCO took the product to Harvard University students. They tested the app and gathered crucial usability data and interface feedback for over two months. Following that phase, Boldare analyzed the data and over two sprints, made significant changes to the product.\n\nFinally, the MVP was released into the real world - the first test bed was Texas. The product kicked off in Austin and after that the app was launched in other cities. The team at Boldare observed how user behaviour changed over time, depending on the level of adoption of the POLCO app in a given city. For example, initial users tended to only read and comment, and only after a while were they ready to vote. This has significantly impacted the [UX and UI](https://www.boldare.com/work/why-design-matters/).\n\n### The business goals: easy activation and retention\n\n> Boldare seemed to be thinking of things we hadn’t thought of before, which we appreciated. It’s been a good experience.\n\n\n\n#### It’s all about two basic features: voting and comments\n\nBefore the Boldare team sat down to begin the design, they spent a lot of time getting to understand the business objectives and the target audience. Product Vision Workshops allowed the team to identify the key features on which Boldare has built the UX and UI, as well as a strategy for obtaining feedback from users.\n\nThe approach taken included specifically identifying the one key feature for the web app and similar for the mobile app. Work based on one key feature has a great effect. Firstly, the users know what goal the app allows them to achieve - there is no confusion about the purpose of the app. Secondly, it gives the development team a complete focus on building the interface according to one user goal. Finally, the investors can properly assess idea validation.\n\nObviously, the digital products have many goals and many features but choosing the single key features for web and mobile allowed the company to focus on priorities.\n\n**Basic feature 1: Simple voting**\n\nEasy access to the policy shortcut allows users to quickly understand the problem.\n\n**Basic feature 2: User comments**\n\nEvery opinion is important in the context of other opinions - users see recent comments in the timeline.\n\n\n\n### Easy to use UI for a broad target group\n\nBuilding the application for such a wide-ranging target group should be based on covering the full spectrum of users’ internet usage awareness. However, this does not change the fact that it is good design practice to choose one \"user persona,\" which in this case was the “user of the future”.\n\n#### Filterable list of items\n\nMaintaining the user’s interest and their sense of commitment is achieved by offering simple access to a vast number of policies.\n\n\n\n#### Easy sharing\n\nPublic policy requires special attention in order to be available everywhere, to everyone. The design made sharing simple, based it on the most popular users’ actions in the USA."},{"body":"### The design process\n\n> \"We liked their style and design but what’s been awesome is the process that they go through.\"\n\n\n\nThe product designers at Boldare are involved every step of the way, from Product Vision Workshops through moodboards to architecture, wireframing and finally graphic design as well as implementation, testing and iterating. They work side by side with developers and business analysts from the very start to help deliver the highest value to the end-user and fulfill the business needs of the client.\n\n#### Moodboard to save you money\n\nA moodboard is Boldare’s first stage in the design phase. It is a set of associations, colours, shapes, fonts, and styles that gives a general overview of the visual direction. Just one quick view and a four-second decision - like it or not. The moodboards are built on data gathered about the users. They are also quick and cost-effective way to gather first feedback. Finally, they give the designers guidance for further development of all graphic elements of the product.\n\nEarlier activities, such as Product Vision Workshops, are focused on building the basics, understanding business objectives, shaping the structure and connections. The moodboard is Boldare’s first conversation with every client about about the design. Usually, clients receive 2-3 different moodboards to choose from.\n\n\n\n#### Wireframes as guidelines\n\nWireframes are a communication tool both with the user, as a visible foundation of the user experience, and with the client, as a basis for discussion about project priorities before the graphic design phase. Work on the information architecture is represented visually and through actions (with clickable wireframes). For POLCO, the team decided to wireframe all views in each of the resolutions with the \"mobile first\" model as a principle.\n\n#### Smooth user flow\n\nBoldare team aimed to build a flow which achieved both business objectives (the actions you want visitors to take on the site) and user objectives (the desires or needs that they want to satisfy). The team planned all paths of acquisition (organic search, paid advertising, social media, email, direct link), activation, and retention, all the way to the actual conversion which, in the case of POLCO, is the voting.\n\nMost importantly, the target user’s objective is to gain a better knowledge of the laws that affect him or her, better representation in government, and the ability to shape the local community. To reach this objective, the user needs to find out what laws and policies affect them, learn about those policies, engage in a discussion about the best decision, and express their opinion in the form of a vote.\n\n### A complete business environment\n\nPOLCO products include websites, widgets, and apps. Each of these allows municipalities to collect citizens’ views concerning proposed legislation and even notional agenda items. Citizens become more active and informed participants in the political process by voicing their views to municipal leaders and other citizens. POLCO makes expressing opinions and analyzing results accessible, easy, and convenient both for the legislators and voters.\n\n#### Website design\n\nInternet presence connected with marketing goals and brand identity. Quick and simple information about the app and its mission.\n\n#### Application design\n\nThe app is the central point of users’ community building.\n\n> \"There is an unbelievable amount of transparency and organization.\"\n\n\n\n### Technology\n\nThree time zones, one team with a single Product Owner on the client’s side. This is not only possible, it can be effective and really boost project creativity. The “small things” which are needed to achieve this are an incredibly clear process, a scrum framework, an interdisciplinary team, and relevant experience.\n\n#### Variety of frameworks\n\nIdentifying the drivers of the front-end development was quite easy: performance, API connection, and time limitations. We needed something simple and future-proof at the same time; namely, Angular.js, javascript, and HTML5."},{"body":"## Results\n\nThe POLCO website and mobile app have gone through all innovation stages - from prototype, through MVP to a fully scalable product. At each stage, the team has managed to improve the UX and UI to meet business and user needs, while maintaining the high quality of the code. Currently, POLCO has over 46 active communities in the USA, which accounts for over 13.6 million people, and is expanding to other cities across the country.\n\nThe iterative delivery allowed POLCO to manage their budgets wisely and Boldare to achieve the right results for the client.\n\n> \"They were not in any way trying to slow their hourly rate. In fact, we had so much at the end that we were able to add functionality.\"\n\n\n\nDuring the collaboration with Boldare, POLCO managed to grow an in-house team with designers and developers, who are now taking POLCO forward into its next stage of evolution."}],"job":null,"photo":null,"slug":null,"cover":"/img/usa-flag.jpg","lead":"A team of brilliant minds, made up of former soldiers from the US Air Force, molecular biologists, and Amazon economists, invited Boldare to build the app to energize citizens and gain valuable insights for policy makers.","templateKey":"article-page","specialArticle":false,"isNewWork":null,"isNewNormal":null,"service":null,"settings":{"date":"2018-06-05T08:47:53.000Z","slug":"case-study-polco","type":"blog","slugType":"work","category":"Case Study","additionalCategories":["Digital Product"],"url":null},"author":"Karolina Kołodziej","authorAdditional":null,"box":{"content":{"title":"Transforming US politics with a voting platform for concerned citizens","tileDescription":"A team of brilliant minds, made up of former soldiers from the US Air Force, molecular biologists, and Amazon economists, invited Boldare to build the app to energize citizens and gain valuable insights for policy makers.","coverImage":"/img/Boldare_case_study_-_Polco_a_voting_platform_for_American_local_goverments.jpg","tags":null},"coverImage":null,"settings":null,"type":null}},"id":"ae745671-5fac-5bf4-8fc6-5584ce0332f4"}}]}},"pageContext":{}},
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