Splash Renewable
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Background
The landscape of Electric Vehicles (EVs) is rapidly evolving. When Splash approached Thought&Function, they had identified an increasing gap between the growth of the EV market and the public charging network needed to support it. There was a clear aspiration to establish a leading peer-to-peer EV charging platform, but they needed expertise in deciphering how and what to do to get there.
Challenge
Splash’s vision was to complement their hardware innovations with a digital platform that enabled peer-to-peer sharing. The concept was simple - a charge point owner (CPO) would set up their charge point on a platform, allowing EV owners to search, book, charge their vehicle, and pay for usage. With limited resources but endless possibilities, the main challenge was pinpointing the best use of their efforts at this critical stage.
Team
We initially placed the following team to deliver the MVP:
Part time Product Manager
Part time Tech Lead
Part time Founder / Strategist
1 x Full Time Senior Engineers
What we did
Early Strategic Alignment
Our initial steps focused on mapping out core functionalities and user flows. This was critical in allowing our developers to start building essential infrastructure as we deepened our understanding of the project requirements in parallel. We kept the process lean and efficient, to ensure no wasted time or energy.
Deep Dive into Discovery: Stakeholder Interviews & More
To craft a product that truly resonates with it’s users, it was important that we delved deeply into Splash's goals and objectives, conducting a series of comprehensive stakeholder interviews. By doing so, we were able to gather insights both at a high and granular level of user interactions.
Uncovering their target audience, user personas and profiles was crucial for us to design a focused and appropriate user experience.
Infusing the User Experience with Splash's Branding
We aspired to weave Splash's identity into design, making every interaction familiar yet innovative.
The design processes is broken into two phases, an initial skeletal wireframe that visualises the users journey through the functions of the app. Once confirmed, we then build the final User Interface design, which brings in styling of all components. We worked closely with the Splash team to ensure we stayed true to their vision, as well as pushed the boundaries for progressive design.
Technology and Infrastructure: Building a Robust Foundation
Our technology choices were strategic, tailored to the project's unique needs:
- React Native facilitated cross-platform mobile application development.
- Backend operations were powered by Node.js.
- Data interactions were streamlined using GraphQL, with PostgresSQL managing the database.
- Terraform played an instrumental role in infrastructure versioning, streamlining deployments.
- Google Cloud Platform provided a reliable backbone, with Google App Engine for backend services and Google Cloud Storage for data security.
- Supplementary tools like Sentry, Sendgrid, and Amplitude added layers of performance monitoring, communication, and analytics.
Roadmapping
Our roadmapping centered around user story mapping, which was crucial in charting out the product's development. It allowed us to prioritise features based on their value, leading to a lean product roadmap that was both agile and value-driven.
Releases were planned in advance to ensure the project was constantly de-risked as features were grouped together to facilitate both smooth development and maximum delivery of value.
The Development Phase: Agility and Expansion
The meticulous discovery phase paved the way for an accelerated development phase. Our team was not only able to cover the planned MVP features but also ventured into additional functionalities, enhancing the product's scope. A structured testing regimen across multiple development environments ensured that our code quality was uncompromised, laying the foundation for a reliable and robust application.
The Project
The outcome
In collaboration with Splash, we delivered more than just an MVP; we presented a solution ready for user engagement and stakeholder demonstrations in only six weeks. Our offering was a testament to proactive planning and strategic execution, positioning Splash for continued success in future development phases.
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Every project is a learning experience, and our partnership with Splash reaffirmed the value of collaboration, clear vision, and adaptability. At Thought&Function, such engagements fuel our passion, inspiring us to continue assisting brands in navigating their way to reach their digital vision.
Here is the prototype of the mobile app if you wanted to see more.
Client's testimonial
