Zutobi: design and dev of the mobile app for learning to drive

Web Designer

Flutter Developer

UI Designer

Flutter

React

UX UI Design / Visual Design / Product Strategy / iOS & Android apps

Driving tests, gamified

Zutobi is a Swedish company established in 2018 by five brothers: David, Tim, Leo, Joel and Lucas Waldenbäck. They invented a gamified way to teach people driving that would require minimal effort and at the same time keep the learner engaged.

The founders had all the features and content thought out and prepped, and they needed a mobile application development services company to wrap it into a cross-platform app for iOS, Android, and web.

Duration

Mar 2018 — 2022

Team

Project Manager

UI/UX Designer

2 Mobile Developers

3 Front End Developers

DevOps Engineer

BackEnd Developer

QA Engineer

The Challenge

We’ve come up with an MVP within four months of 2018. The team has been expanding it with features since, until it grew to the point when refactoring was required for effective scaling.

An MVP was delivered for both iOS and Android platforms, while the already existing website was supplemented with the functionality of the app. After that it evolved into a sophisticated web app and management center, with mobile apps also getting more content and feature-rich.

Zutobi

More Than Just a Partnership

What once started as a limited partnership over an MVP delivery has now turned into close collaboration with a shared product vision, constant communication, and 100% confidence in the steps each party is taking.

The way EGO – as a mobile and web development services company – works on this project in many aspects contradicts conventional practice.

Usually, a development team would keep somewhat limited communication with the client to remain focused, but in our case, it is completely the opposite.

Zutobi apps are now used by 200 thousand users monthly. This requires the EGO team to be ready to react to any issues ASAP. Although unexpected things are extremely rare, our dedicated team of developers is ready to make them right at a moment’s notice, 24/7.

Eugene Polyanskiy, CEO at EGO

We also utilize SCRUM methodology in development. However, on this project, we remain flexible in using it. For instance, until the refactoring stage, the team synced only upon request. Now, when the web and mobile teams are having related tasks, we practice daily standups.

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The Beginning

Zutobi approached us in March 2018. The MVP was delivered in June 2018.

The MVP version of the mobile apps included the following features:

Authorization (Signing up, signing in, onboarding)

Roadmap flow

Learning (lessons, categories, tests)

Payment processing (through subscriptions)

Stats (leaderboards, badges)

Settings

Ads

The website was similar to the app in terms of principal design but also allowed payments through Stripe. As a web application development company, we saw a lot of opportunities for further improvement.

Zutobi Video Showcase

A quick overview of the zutobi platform, a rundown of the development project, and the client's plans for the future

The Story

The Take-Off

After the MVP went live, the Zutobi team put the development on pause, focusing on expanding the user base and generating more revenue. So when they came back in the fall of 2018, the team was changed significantly.

The first thing we had our hands on was the issues found by the Zutobi team. Some of them were crucial for further scaling and user base growth.

The Zutobi team noticed that paid users became unable to use the app. Turned out, Apple changed the way it had been confirming subscriptions. It took our developers one hectic week to investigate and address the issue ASAP.

Then our Android and iOS app development agency switched to product expansion and optimization.

The Story

The Upgrade

The mobile applications got payment process and authorization flow upgrades. New driving tests were added, allowing multiple answers. App speed was optimized as well.

The website also has been getting dramatic updates to its front end and back end. The front end was significantly updated for search engine optimization, and more updates are on the way. We’ve also been adding a blog, and designing and implementing new pages on the website.

Content management has been one of the key challenges in this project. Since driving rules and regulations vary depending on the region, we were asked to update and improve a content subsystem.

That helped Zutobi’s writing team produce and distribute content among multiple courses, lessons, or exams more effectively.

The back end was improved in terms of security. The admin functionality was expanded to provide the Zutobi team with more flexibility. Almost every API was rewritten to optimize the website’s speed.

Current Status

The Zutobi app has been a tremendous success.

What we’ve been able to do is to compare success rates before using our app and after. And we have seen that 90%+ actually passed the test with our app.

Tim Waldenback for CW39 Houston on Nov 12, 2020

And due to its growth in 2020, we realized the app requires significant optimization for further scaling. One of our developers suggested reaching this goal by migrating from React Native to Flutter. Eventually, he convinced the client that it would help make the apps even more responsive and ready for scaling and high loads.

So as of November 2020, the EGO iOS and Android mobile app development company is completely rewriting the app.

In a few weeks, we’ll finish rewriting the backend from PHP to Python. The mobile app is being made in Flutter instead of React Native, and the website will run on TS+NextJS instead of ReactJS.

This refactoring stage has been bringing us a lot of unique insights, and we’re about to share them in a separate case study.