Tigerair needed a new website to be inline with their Australian brand relaunched image and make flight bookings easier for their customers as part of their separation from Singapore Airlines and over to new Owners Virgin Australia in October 2015. Texo Design was responsible for building the new site to showcase more offers and promotions.

Utilising Agile methodology in the development process allowed Texo Design to adapt to changes in the requirement during the development phase. By having daily communication with the client, we were able to capture issues before they become one and also ensures they were up-to-date on the progress at each stage of development.

Maurice Blackburn is a leading law firm in Australia and had engaged McCANN and Texo Design to maintain their website. McCANN is responsible for the site’s overall User Flow while Texo Design is responsible for maintaining and developing new and exciting features on the site using industry standard Agile processes.

We work with the Maurice Blackburn and McCANN teams on a daily basis to plan and scope each requirement to map out the best solution for the website. With any development, there is always several rounds of testing, with technical testing, internal testing and finally User Acceptance Testing before we deploy to production. Even after deployment, there is still a round of post deployment testing to check that everything is working.

Daily communications with all teams involved is important to ensure that weekly objectives are on track for the following week’s deployment. We use many means of communication which includes project management tools, status boards, and verbal communication.

The old Clarence Professional website was looking dated and required a refreshed new look and feel along with a new easy to use CMS that could be managed by the Clarence team.

The end solution was to implement a custom front end and use WordPress as the CMS. In addition, we made it easy enough so all editing of the CMS can be done directly to the website.

Working closely with Clarence Professional meant that we were able to fine tune the site through the implementation phase using Agile methodology.

Retreat Booker approached Texo Design to design and build a new website including the Content Management System (CMS) for their business that would allow users to book full retreat tours and packages. One of their main requirements is a solution that is easy for them to manage and a front-end that is user friendly for bookings by their customers. As experts in web development, Texo Design also recommended that a blog be added to assist in SEO during the requirement gathering stage to assist the site to be ranked higher in Google searches.

With an end-to-end website development, Texo Design ensured the requirements gathered were detailed to ensure the delivered website matched the client’s expectations. Utilising the Agile methodology, Texo Design ensure the client was updated weekly on the progress of the project and a staging site provided to capture feedback and ensure potential issues were avoided.

The objective of this project was to develop a platform that caters for a large number of different electricity products available in Australia.

Our goal is to provide end users an easy way to track their energy consumption over long periods. In addition, they would gain valuable knowledge on how to save energy in their day to day life and how switching to another energy provider can help them save money. We ensure that all user data is secure and synchronised across all platforms (Web, iOS and Android) with a single sign in.

Key objectives of the project

• Easy to use
• Secure & synchronised
• Provides accurate information about energy plan & usage
• Provides end-user with data of their energy consumption
• Integrated with 3rd party system such as SmartMeter, CurrentCost etc.

With the smartphones becoming more popular than ever, clients also feel that the product must

• Quick and responsive on smartphones
• Have full functionality on smartphones
• Provide real-time information with push notification on smartphones

The challenges

• Being the first mobile app that allows user to track energy usage & switch to the best price plan
• Ensure that all the user data in sync across environments, e.g. mobile, web portal.
• Designing a user-friendly UI
• Security of user data should be first features
• Incorporating the uniqueness of the varying metering types that exist in the market
• Catering for the different pricing models that retailers provide to customers

The solutions
With iterative development, we have continuously received feedback from end-user focus group, designers, developers and testers. We perform a full-stack development from researching the market, building up the user stories, coming up with the final design to implementation and deployment.

• We used Microsoft .NET running in Azure IASS as a way to ensure stability and security. To protect our user’s data, we have employed multiples security practices such as SSL for public site, data encryption for user’s database and are continuously scanning our public services for common security threats listed in OSWAP https://www.owasp.org/ “
• For mobile applications, we voted for native application development instead of hybrid solution (PhoneGap, Sencha etc.) in order to ensure we can deliver the key objectives

Technology

• Web development by Net framework 4.5, MS SQL 2012
• iOS development by Xcode
• Android development by Eclipse

Tappy bulbs is a fun and simple game that excites players and electrifies their fun. Players needs to tap the bulbs to turn them off but being fast isn’t the key to achieving the highest score.

Key objectives of the project

• Increase the brand awareness of Texo Energy Saver app
• Create a fun game for everyone to enjoy with their families and friends
• Help users learn about saving energy and ultimately, saving money

The solutions

• Creating a mini game to increase brand awareness
• Create the game on Facebook first to gain awareness
• Subsequent release on smartphones that enables users to play anywhere

The challenges

• Ensure the game play and graphic are the same across all platforms
• Make sure the game is engaging and available on Facebook, App Store and Play Store

Technology

• Create synergy across various platforms i.e. Facebook, iOS, Android
• FB App canvas using HTML 5.0, CSS 3.0, JQuery, PHP
• Android development with Eclipse
• iOS development with Xcode

Partnership
McCann works with client to create the brief and comes up with the design for the project. Texo Design will develop, implement and deploy the project for the client. In some instances, McCann will discuss rough ideas of a marketing concept with Texo Design to understand the technological challenges and possibilities to complete the brief.

Planning
After receiving a brief requirement from McCann, Texo Design expands on them by raising questions to ensure there are no ambiguity to the requirement. Texo Design also suggests alternatives or additional features we believe would either enhance the project or improve the usability. Once the scope of work has been finalised, we then provide a detailed project plan to the client to ensure the milestones are achieved and the requirements met.

Communication

• Texo Design´s onsite PM discusses would either discuss with McCann’s team to get requirements or meet with the client with McCann.
• The onsite PM then organises the tasks and discusses with the offshore development team to obtain the cost estimation and come up technical solution.
• Once the solution and quote is finalised, the Onsite PM then communicates to the client and McCann to obtain approval to commence the project.
• Texo Design organises daily catch up (depending on the client) to provide updates on the status of each sprint in the project.

How we Deliver & Execute
Utilising Agile methodology in our software development process allows us to be able to adapt to changes in the requirement if the client requests. Furthermore, by having daily communication with the client allows up to capture issues before they become one and also ensures they know the progress at each stage of development.

On the completion of each stage, we get the client to test and provide feedback so that any issues can be fixed before the final delivery.

The challenges

• Developing a highly secure system for online payment using Credit Card and Paypal.
• Creating a flexible backend system to adapt to multiple business models.
• Meeting the custom requirements of the client in a very tight schedule.
• Supported McCann by producing a demo and prototype applications in a very tight schedule for them to present to their client.

Technology

• Web development using Magento 8 (Community edition)
• Customer Plug-in self-developed to manage user contracts and link them to existing CRM
• iOS7, PHP, Parallax effect, XCode 5

Oath is the world’s first interactive gameplay that allows you to challenge your friends and family to win anything you desire by recording those challenges. All you need to do is lock in the stake you want to challenge for and select the friend you want to challenge using the Oath app. The app will handle the rest and once the winner is determined, the loser will need to pay up and the winner just has to sit back and wait for the prize.

Challenge
Creating the world first social gaming app on iPhone and Android devices

Reproducing the high quality avatars as in the designs

Creating a mechanism to invite friends to play

Technology

• Create synergy across various platforms i.e. iOS, Android
• Android development with Eclipse
• iOS development with Xcode

MyWitness is a digital witness in your pocket; a personal safety system which alerts the people you trust most whenever you’re in danger, feel threatened or need help.

MyWitness can be triggered in under 2 seconds, without needing to look at your phone, and even if your phone is locked with a PIN. It’s a seriously fast safety app to trigger in an emergency, when time is of the essence.

Clik2Order Platform allows us to roll out a mobile app for businesses to accept orders, booking, reservations and receive payment. Additional features includes Rewards functionality, Store Locater and

FaceBook integration. This guarantees to maximise the return on investments for the business and the app can be published worldwide.

Key objectives of the project
The advantage of the Clik2Order platform is that it allows the mobile app to be tailored uniquely for each business and is perfect for businesses with single or multiple locations or franchises. It is easily customisable and allows the app to be pushed out quick and without much capital investment.

The solutions

• Creating a web portal and mobile solution to meets the needs of businesses that is secure and functional.

The challenges

• Developing a platform to create a mobile app to cater to a wide variety of businesses in different industries.
• Establishing requirements for the platform that covers all functions for the web portal and mobile app.

Technology

• Web development by Net framework 4.5, MS SQL 2012
• iOS development with Xcode
• Android development with Eclipse

Partnership
Digital Dialogue and Texo Design have been working together since 2012 to build some of the best apps for their clients.

Planning
Planning is critical to the success of every project by setting out the key milestones and deliverables. Working together as a team, Digital Dialogue and Texo Design have strived towards achieving those goals.

Communication
Since the start of the partnership, one of the key success factors in delivering each project on time is having an open channel of communication. We introduced the Scrum process to our projects so that there is greater visibility of the key milestones as well as identifying any issues or risks early. This enabled us to come up with work around early and implement the changes before the development is completed thus avoiding costly rework.

Another key success factors is having daily catch up utilising tools such as Skype and Slack. However, just as important is having regular face to face meetings to allows us to work together using our One Team approach.

How we Deliver & Execute

• Before the project commences, we send out the project plan which not only include our tasks but also include Digital Dialogue’s tasks i.e. design assets and API development.
• Sprint Planning: Texo Design and Digital Dialogue work as ONE team to define the sprint’s goal and we agree on the scope of works for each sprint.
• Sprint Review: After each sprint is completed, Texo Design sends a build and provides a demo to Digital Dialogue to show that we have met the Sprint goal.
• Sprint Retrospective: Once a Sprint is completed, we organise a retrospective meeting to review our effort and issues raise from that Sprint. The sprint retrospective review helps us to idenfity areas for improvement in the next sprint.
• Beta testing: We send out beta version of the app for testing before the end of each sprint to allow us to capture feedback as soon as possible. That means by the end of that particular sprint, we have achieved our goals and resolved any potential issues before they become one.

The challenges

• The technical challenges include ensuring the best user experience on iPad when rendering the 360 rotation for car exterior, interior or panorama that uses the gyroscope.
• Displaying large-size HD photos on full screen mod plus video playing while ensuring the app is stable
• Hitting the pixel perfect standard and app performance on iPhone i.e. respond quickly and rendering images perfectly, location based service for image capturing and map tools

Technology

• iOS development with XCode
• Android Development with XCode
• 3D UI effect using OpenGL 2.0 for iOS
• Using CoreData for CRM Module
• Background synchronisation process intergrated with RestFul Web Service
• API Development with Ruby on Rail
• Apple Map Toolkit
• Synchronisation & Caching Data