CubeZoo

Warehousing may seem to be a simple case of holding and releasing stock, but it requires a lot of work behind the scenes to make it function smoothly. The major networks such as Vodacom, MTN, CellC and Telkom, for example, have hundreds of thousands of stock items, ranging from SIM cards to devices.

As a result, they need to ensure well organised warehouses to deal with massive stock loads. This includes making it simple for warehouse staff to manage the logistics of getting each stock item to where it needs to be.

CubeZoo was commissioned to create an app that made scanning and receipting stock via a PDA easier for warehouse staff. Using Flash, the development team created an interactive application that saved time while simplifying the entire process. 

The original warehouse journey was a complex process of identifying, scanning and capturing stock. One delivery required scanning the stock as well as scanning generated barcodes as just two of many more steps, and the entire process could become extremely complicated if not done correctly. 

CubeZoo set out to not only simplify this, but to reduce the opportunity for human error to creep in. With a focus on user experience, we ensured that the PDA app was intuitive and easy to use.

Starting with the premise that anything explained well makes it easier, CubeZoo included explanatory elements to help staff complete the stock receipting journey. Using short animations between tasks to better explain a process, as well as validation points to ensure that the user could not journey further unless the previous task was completed correctly, the app ensured that everyone had to follow the process correctly. The UI of the app was also designed to simplify the user’s journey flow by adding progress bars and view list buttons to monitor items that had been scanned to eliminate errors. 

In creating an app focused on staff experience, CubeZoo not only ensured that the warehouse gained improved tracking capabilities and error reduction, but that the entire process was simplified. This led to many cost-saving and efficiency benefits.

Beancruncher, a website platform that takes a company’s accounting data and produces coherent, branded and personalised financial reports, was designed to help businesses of all sizes save time and money. Offering features to help the company better understand its financial data, create reports, forecast the future, track progress, and benchmark performance, Bean Cruncher can be integrated into major accounting software such as Sage, Xero, and Quickbooks.

Businesses wanting to make use of Bean Cruncher’s personalised features and capabilities require a partner that has the development skills to ensure a great user experience and perfect integration with other software platforms. This is why a client approached CubeZoo to create a customised financial solution built on Bean Cruncher.

With a production build of 18 months, this proved to be CubeZoo’s biggest website project to date. The success of the project required special attention to planning, and CubeZoo spent five weeks producing a functional spec, three weeks creating user stories, and eight weeks creating UX design. This played the most fundamental part of the platform development, ensuring that it was easy to use and met the needs of the different teams that were going to be using the platform. 

Everyone hates admin, and loves an app that takes all the pain out of filling in details on forms. CubeZoo was commissioned to create just such an app to make the RICA registration process quicker and easier for people buying new SIM cards.

With every SIM card issued in South Africa, the RICA process is mandatory to enable the card to be activated. This is generally done in store or by field agents who sell SIM cards on behalf of the networks, taking customers’ information and using an automated system to activate the SIM card. The most common way to do this is via USSD, but this can take up to 7 minutes. 

CubeZoo used Flash to create an almost seamless process to RICA new customers in under 45sec.

CubeZoo’s first step was to convert a normal device running Android software into a barcode scanner. This is generally an easy task, but this scanner needed to be seamless so as to be able to scan one or multiple SIM cards without having any human trigger or confirmation intervention. 

After developing, CubeZoo tested, analysed, and tested some more to ensure the app was performing the way it needed to. Unfortunately, the CubeZoo team had done their job too well and the barcode processor didn’t wait for one scan to be completed before starting on the next one. 

In order to shorten the queue of frames that needed to be processed, and to save some battery power and keep the CPU from running at maximum capacity, the dev team decided to implement some logic that would only feed frames to the processor after the previous frame has been completed. This keeps the processor’s queue a lot shorter with almost no difference in barcode recognition and read time.

After implementing Firebase ML Kit Vision to allow the app to recognise and read bar codes via the device's camera, the team noticed that the thread that handles the barcode processing was running at full capacity even after the camera was no longer being used. This slowed the device down significantly, especially on older devices. 

This was because of the fact that the processor’s multithreading capability was being used. Normally this won't be a problem, as multithreading is great for doing jobs like processing frames in the background while the user continues to use the app. In this case, however, the Firebase ML thread stayed alive until it completed its queue of frames to process. 

While this is normal, and exactly how threads have been designed to work, it caused the challenges that required the additional logic to be implemented. With that in place, the app was just as quick to recognise and read a barcode as it was before, with the added benefit of increased battery life.

The history of communication is a tale as old as mankind. From cave paintings to text messages, innovations in communication have provided new ways for people to share their ideas faster. 

This is essentially what Telkom’s business is all about. Since its earliest days, when the first South African Post Office was established in Cape Town in 1791, Telkom has enabled South Africans to communicate with each other and the rest of the world. 

This is what the telecommunications giant wanted to showcase to employees in the creation of a new intranet. The intranet needed to be a comfortable and entertaining online environment for all of Telkom's internal employees, educating them about the company’s history as well as current affairs in an interactive and playful manner. 

CubeZoo was tasked with creating the platform that needed to be more than just an ordinary intranet. It needed to be a tool to showcase Telkom’s past and present, providing a proud and happy environment through which employees could interact.

CubeZoo decided that a great way to showcase Telkom’s history would be through an interactive timeline. This was relatively straightforward, but Telkom’s Heads of Departments wanted to monitor user performance. This was a challenge because the platform, being an intranet, couldn’t use tools like Google analytics. 

There was a great deal of debate around what was achievable in such a short time frame, but perseverance and teamwork enabled CubeZoo to deliver a solution that far surpassed the client’s exacting requirements. 

Another large challenge came in the form of understanding Telkom's business network, comprised of hundreds of departments and thousands of partners. The CubeZoo team spent weeks untangling Telkom’s business network. The team dedicated a room to the project and spent hours pinning and linking all the departments. This process allowed the us to start making sense of Telkom’s complex ecosystem, and enabled the design of the final product. 

By creating an interactive illustration of Telkom's full ecosystem with simplified navigational touchpoints, CubeZoo was able to map everything the telecommunications provider wanted employees to learn. This became the basis of the intranet, built around the interactive timeline.

The CubeZoo team was able to simplify the user experience, creating a fun and engaging environment. All of the engagements by Telkom employees were used for measurement purposes, with each step of the journey being gamified through questions and insights. 

As employees completed questions and levels, they were rewarded with badges. These were transformed into real internal incentives. This not only made the project trackable, but fun and engaging enough to motivate Telkom staff to get involved. 

Today, the Telkom intranet remains a valuable communication tool, combining the past, present, and future into a single, easy-to-use platform.

When most people hear the term Virtual Reality (VR), they think about games, but the technology is being put to use in many other applications. VR is a great way to allow customers to get a “hands-on” experience, allowing them to see and live the product or solution they are purchasing. 

When Vodacom decided to showcase its fibre offering through a VR tour for potential customers, the telecoms giant called on CubeZoo to make it happen. CubeZoo was given only four weeks to complete the project, but quickly rose to the challenge.

With less than four weeks to shoot, engineer sound and code a VR application experience, CubeZoo pulled out all the stops, bringing in all available resources and working a number of late nights to meet the deadline. While the video team was on set shooting, the development team and the deign team set to work to create an exhilarating and immersive experience. 

There was a great deal of debate around what was achievable in such a short time frame, but perseverance and teamwork enabled CubeZoo to deliver a solution that far surpassed the client’s exacting requirements. 

In addition to using senior resources on the project, the CubeZoo team found that creating milestones made everyone’s tasks easier. Once the most complex VR journey was mapped, the same code, sound and hotspots were re-used in the other six journeys, making them relatively quick and easy to implement.

Timing wasn’t the only challenge faced by the team. Technology challenges cropped up as well. The VR application had to be developed natively for both Android and IOS as a result of the requirement to have the app accessible on multiple devices. CubeZoo decided to work with Unity and develop the app in a hybrid manner for all devices. 

The end result was an experience that allowed Vodacom Fibre customers (and potential customers) to journey through fibre lines into different rooms of a house, showcasing how and where the fibre was accessible – from streaming movies and playing online games to controlling appliances offsite. 

Bringing customers into the virtual world of the workings of the fibre infrastructure, CubeZoo and Vodacom Fibre not only illustrated the benefits of super-fast connectivity, but enabled people to gain a better understanding of the technology.

Even businesses that have been around since the 1920’s need a great digital presence. When BMW’s motorcycle division, Motorrad, decided to create a website app in 2016, cross-browser compatibility quickly made them hit the skids. CubeZoo took up the challenge, creating an interactive web app that would allow biking enthusiasts to take a road trip around South Africa via a digital roadmap of on-road and off-road trails. 

Not only did CubeZoo enable an unforgettable online journey, we ensured there were regular pit stops. At each of these pit stops, the user could enter the pitstop and browse Motorrad’s range of motorcycles and accessories, change the colours of the bikes, and even listen to them rev their exquisite engines.

Back then (In 2016), older browsers – Internet Explorer in particular – were still semi-mainstream. As a result, these browsers provided a number of technical challenges. Primary among these was the requirement to have the site load fast enough to retain customers’ attention and interest. The size of the app was therefore a massive factor. 

In addition, BMW Motorrad embarked on an advertising campaign that shared the web app link via QR code in major print publications. This meant that the web app had to function and look equally good on smaller devices. CubeZoo had to figure out how to maintain the same memorable feel that people were seeing on larger screens and translate it onto a smaller mobile screen.

We wanted to take the brand and give it its own feature digital space. This required thinking outside the box and using an agile approach. Careful planning was essential to the success of Motorrad’s digital initiative, and CubeZoo worked with and prototyped the heavy lifting challenges first. This meant that the we almost worked backwards to complete the rest of the web platform, dealing with large file constraints and smaller screens. 

By implementing multiple pre-loaders that would load just before executions were required, we ensured that displaying the web app on smaller screens was possible and offered a richer experience by forcing the user to orientate their device to landscape. This offered a wider and a more joyful journey experience, and allowed us to create a customer experience that allowed motorbike enthusiasts to take their BMW experience to the next level.

Most cigarette smokers want to quit, but fewer than one in ten smokers succeed in quitting without the right support mechanisms in place. Pfizer Pharmaceuticals partnered with CubeZoo to help South African smokers wanting to quit, providing an innovate mobile application that highlighted the benefits of quitting.

The app, called MyTimeToStart, educated smokers about the realities of smoking and used clever methods to engage their emotions to trigger them to quit. Ranging from money and fitness to beauty and self-worth, the app emphasised the negative effects of smoking and the benefits of giving up the habit.

CubeZoo and Pfizer wanted to stress the benefits of quitting through measurable examples for each individual, using their interactions with the app to inform them of the health and financial implications. This was far more of a challenge in 2013 when the app was developed than it would be today.

Back then, heath monitoring apps and gadgets like Fitbits didn’t exist, and there were far fewer resources for the CubZoo development team to make use of. This meant the CubeZoo team had to engineer new technology to achieve a number of the app features. 

The app was native to IOS and Android, so everything the team achieved on one platform had to be implemented on the other. A hybrid solution was an option, but it wasn't as mainstream back then as it is today, so we decided to develop the app natively. 

The team found smart ways to utilize the smartphone hardware to achieve the results they were looking for. For example, using the camera on the back of the phone, the team created a blood pressure monitor. By placing their index finger over the camera, the user was able to get a blood pressure reading as the light from the camera illuminated the blood vessels in the fingertip, with the camera capturing changes in intensity as the blood flowed through the vessels with each heartbeat. 

At each touchpoint, the app would feature a ‘Quit Smoking’ button. Once a user clicked the button, the app would geo-locate their closest doctor, dentist or pharmacy on a map and instruct the user to present the app. The specialist would then know that they were there for the MyTimeToStart campaign and would prescribe them Champex, a drug that helps in quitting smoking. 

Despite the challenges, this ambitious project was an immense success, with many users sharing the app with friends and family.