Mobile Social Networking. In 25 days.Vishnu Gopalvish.in

Me:Technical Lead, MobME.

A real world case study

of rewriting a stubborn old application

and making it new, pretty and usable.

1 designer. 1 developer.1 sweeper. 25 days.

OLD MOBSHAREPHOTOS, VIDEOS, AUDIO, BLOGS, CLUBS, PEOPLE, SPOTLIGHT, HALL OF FAME, INVITE

NEW MOBSHARESLIDER, PHOTOS, VIDEOS, PEOPLE, UPLOAD, SIGNUP, FEATURED PHOTOS/VIDEOS, ACTIVE USERS

How we did it

Lessons learnt

Mistakes made

Interlude: Background

Poor design and usability.

Slow site.

Confusing. Too many features.

OLD MOBSHAREPHOTOS, VIDEOS, AUDIO, BLOGS, CLUBS, PEOPLE, SPOTLIGHT, HALL OF FAME, INVITE

Was not sellable.

We (re)started with the vision.

A place where anybody can share media taken on

a mobile.

Cut down on the features:Photos, Videos, Social Networking,Mobile interaction.

Less is more. Do less, but do it better.

Made mockups of the whole site design.

MOBSHARE MOCKUPPOWERPOINT MOCKUP OF THE PROFILE PAGE.

HTMLized the Mockup ASAP.

DESIGN NEUTRAL HTMLHTMLIZED VERSION OF THE VIEW PAGE.

outsourced rest of the work to a design firm

FINAL DESIGNPRETTY MUCH EXACTLY TO SPEC.

High Level Technology Choices:PHP, Symfony frameworkStandard LAMP serversFactory in Ruby

Had lots of choices:RAILS / DJANGO, LIGHTTPD / NGINXDecided on Familiar over ‘Better’

Fast turnaround needs agile and small teams.

Clear separation of work

Developer, Designer and One Person to Roam

Around Between the Two Roles (Sweeper)

Definite milestones

Do or die, we kept to those milestones.

Daily Communication with management through

EODs.

Mistakes

Didn’t get reliable servers.

Didn’t plan for continuity.

Not enough documentation.

No Unit Tests.

Praise: George BrodyIt looks FANTASTIC!! The team has done a great job on the whole user experience part.

NEW MOBSHARESLIDER, PHOTOS, VIDEOS, PEOPLE, UPLOAD, SIGNUP, FEATURED PHOTOS/VIDEOS, ACTIVE USERS

Sellable.

Proud.

Questions?Register at

www.mobshare.in& send MMS to

me@mobshare.in