WeBlast Ltd.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of QwertyGo, an online platform for children.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with WeBlast Ltd?

We needed help with developing a website for our company.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

WeBlast Ltd. helped us develop our website from scratch. The site is an interactive platform where preschoolers of different ages can do about 3,000 tasks to prepare them for school. It can also be accessed using different devices, such as phones, PCs, and laptops. Their team also created an English and Russian version of our site.

What is the team composition?

We worked with five people from their team.

How did you come to work with WeBlast Ltd?

We found them on Upwork.

What is the status of the engagement?

We worked together on this particular project from April 2020–January 2021. We’re currently working with them on a different project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We had a very successful collaboration. The website they delivered was functioning well and became popular — in fact, a lot of children continue to use it to play.

How did WeBlast Ltd perform from a project management standpoint?

They were great in terms of sticking to our deadline and budget. The project was delivered within six months and continues to be used by our customers. We communicated with them through email, phone calls, Skype, and Zeplin.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were very affordable, which was quite convenient for us.

Are there any areas they could improve on?

I have no complaints about their work because they did a great job on this project.

Any advice for potential customers?

Make sure to clearly define your goals and provide them with the right documentation needed for the execution of your project.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Islamic education startup

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire WeBlast Ltd., and what were your goals?

Custom development of a mobile app for children between 7-14 yrs

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We shortlisted 5 vendors and selected We Blast based on their prior experience, good methodology, and good communication.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

• Registration in & onboarding: Including single sign-on integration for major social media platforms
• User profiles & account: Parents can create a free account and upgrade to a paid version giving access to more lessons. Under the account multiple profiles can be created.
• Lessons: Lessons are structured in subjects, levels, lessons, and micro-lessons. Each micro-lesson is basically a quiz-type of the screen, such as multiple choice, true/false statement, and fill-in-the-blanks. In a few instances, there is audio the child can lesson to or a gif-type of animation.
• Earning and spending rewards: Users will earn Coins through completing lessons, quizzes, and streaks. They can also unlock trophies and extra Coins by completing lessons. Coins can be spent in the shop on outfits for their avatars. Other rewards include Gems, Trophies, and Streaks.
• Parent dashboard: Parents have access to the parent dashboard (through a password) where they can manage the settings, their child’s profile, see their child’s progress and provide feedback if the child is applying the lessons in life (i.e. demonstrating good behavior such as manners during eating, doing their prayers, etc). This is the feedback that the parent just tickmarks something and then the child will receive Coins and Gems in their account)

Backend functionality

• Admin panel for content management: to allow for simple self-management of the content behind the various micro-lessons (quizzes, text, audio or image files) and ability for bulk upload.
• Push and email notifications: to send reminders or updates on the progress of the user
• App analytics: from user engagement to app crashes Application Cross-platform (iOS 11+ and Android 7+) Smartphone and tablets

Frontend development

React Native Backend database

• Option 1: Node JS + MongoDB + Aws
• Option 2: Firebase and Firestore Hosting Google or AWS Data structure that allows for scalability. Avoid nesting and consider denormalizing data. Recommend to align on the data structure Code repository

To be hosted in private GitHub repository. We would like to see the code pushed to the repository after the acceptance of each milestone and payment release 

• Code deployment that would incur charges to be discussed beforehand to align on the cost. For example, the use of CDN, Google Cloud Storage, etc
• Code deployment to be automated as much as possible.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

3 resources

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

We have just launched - and we got an NPS of 90 from the beta testing

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Bi-weekly sprint calls with demos, communication mainly via email, got access to git lab later as well

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They had the passion and commitment to deliver successfully and the flexibility to adjust where needed.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

A bit of stronger time management