Case Studies

Analysis and Discovery

The brief was clear - design a solution that allows for teams to make and manage their booking, arrive for their session, let themselves into a room, play a game, have their score automatically saved and see their final score in the site leaderboards. All this managed with an on-site Front of House system.

Simple.

We took the brief and created an initial set of component parts for further discussion. We then took a deep-dive with the team at Tandem Set & Scenery (a group of phenomenally talented game creators and builders with a healthily strong "can-do" attitude!).

We emerged with full detail of the functional requirements.

We drew up a full functional specification and presented all mobile App screens for approval and clarification. After just a couple of refinement rounds we had a full confirmed specification to work to.

Development, Testing & Deployment

Every requirement sat firmly and comfortably within our wheelhouse. The standout requirement from normal Software development was physically managing access to the rooms and starting the games. This required dedicated Raspberry Pi development, to integrate with RFID readers, manage the Maglocks and integrate with Unity to initialise the games.

Working with a test-bench containing a Raspberry Pi, an RFID reader, the external room display, maglock and indicator of gameplay with Unity, we were able to create an installation of the Game Room Management System for full testing.

The approach proved highly effective - when it came to physical installation testing, the Pi ISO image was applied to a formatted SD card and inserted into a completed Game Room with no further configuration - the work went from test into a live physical implementation with minimal rework.

The Mobile Apps and APIs were deployed as Web services in the Azure Cloud using our standard tri-stage hosting configuration. All deployment is managed by Azure Pipelines for a smooth Continuous Integration setup.

The full solution

An extensive suite of developments enabling multiple automation scenarios, to create a seamless user experience.

Key components and aspects:-

• Progressive Web App, enabling the participants to...
  • Manage their current and future bookings
  • See real-time and historic results
  • Agree terms and conditions and sign their waiver
    
    
• SalesForce BookNow integration
  
  
• Front of House management system...
  • Assign RFID tags to groups
  • Manage Group Bookings
  • Manage Participants
  • Reset / Disable / Reconfigure Game rooms


• Raspberry Pi development...
  • Lock / Unlock rooms via RFID
  • Manage in-use room display
  • Initialise games
  • Self-heal and reset games
  
  

Development, Testing & Deployment

This was to be a design-led development. The UX was created as a storyboard to reach agreement in behaviour, style and implementation. Each screen was incorporated into a full functional specification, detailing the technical requirements.

Branding

To be able to present a contemporary website, the offline branding needed to be modernised. We worked with Road Radio, presenting several ideas inspired by the offline branding, sympathetic to the brand, whilst being compatible with a modern online presence.

Administration & Order management

A custom content management system maintains the complex data capture required, enabling the simultaneous management of car manufacturer-related products alongside product manufacturer detail.

A Custom Order Management facility with Invoice generation completes the website management facility.

The full solution

• Custom content management
• Custom order management
• Stripe with Apple / Google Pay integration
• PayPal integration
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Interactive product enquiry management using TawkTo

A tri-stage, Azure Web Services, hosting environment (Development, User Acceptance Testing and Production).

Azure Pipelines is used for a full Continuous Integration solution.

Analysis and Discovery

Fundamentally, the data from the existing database could not be lost, it contained years of metadata that had been manually maintained for each photograph and photoset within the website.

We identified and mapped paths for all data to the new database and then carried out full data migrations.

Next, as part of the porting exercise to ASP.Net MVC (C#), we redeveloped the User experience (UX). We also identified key areas where the website could be upgraded:-

• Improved logged-in user functionality
• Responsive upgrades
• Advanced keyword matching
• Substantial photograph management upgrades
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Subtle design upgrades

Development, Testing & Deployment

A key logistical aspect of migrating this website was the sheer number (and size) of high resolution photographs. These would need to be moved across to the new hosting location. Utlising FTP we created a small App that would pull across all content files, retaining their folder structure, with failsafe restarting ability.

As with much of the UX work we do, we allow the development to be design-led, therefore all front-end work was completed first, to represent the user-journey through all aspects in the website.

A unique requirement of this content management system was the need to be able to batch upload all photographs from a photoshoot.  Once uploaded, multiple photosets were to be created for presentation within the website - maximising the efficiency of managing many large files. We created an "Image Bank" facility that allowed for large zip files to be uploaded, automatically extracted and the metadata for each image to be retrieved and stored against each database entry.

With all relevant data for each image stored, the creation and subsequent management of photosets was a simple "point and click" exercise. Keyword matching and SEO aspects were carried along with each file.

As is standard in any of our developments, a tri-stage hosting environment was created (Development, User Acceptance Testing and Production). This allowed core front-end aspects to go live, while additional new content management functions were being added behind-the-scenes.

The full solution

In addition to the advanced content management, we also create a fully integrated order management facility.

Key components and aspects:-

• Responsive User Experience
• Advanced search facilities
• User control panel, featuring "light board" management
• Image ordering facility
• Photoset and photo management
• User search analysis function
• Order management