UXDLAB Software

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Our company is the leading hospitality technology company in the Philippines. Our suite of products includes D2G-Tv which is our hotel iptv solution and D2G-Ci which is our hotel contactless check-in solution.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire UXDLAB Software, and what were your goals?

To provide a video on demand system which relies solely on the Local Area Network, and is branded to each property. The VOD System should be part of the android app and allow users to stream free and paid movies in their rooms.

SOLUTION

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

We had several calls and meeting with Sudesh and Neha both did a great job of talking the talk, and we fully believed they were capable. During the sales process they were incredibly responsive and quick to answer any questions.

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

Project Objective: To provide a video on demand system which relies solely on the Local Area Network, and is branded to each property. The VOD System should be part of the android app and allow users to stream free and paid movies in their rooms.

Backend

• Videos should stream using h.265, when not possible use h.264.
• Ability for the hotel to upload and name videos as well as provide a description and rating for each uploaded video.
• Hotels should be able to provide a placeholder image for each video.
• Hotels should have the ability to set a price, or free for each movie.
• Some form of counter to know how many times each video has been viewed.
• User generated taxonomy for movies. I.e. horror, sci-fi, which can be created or can be selected from a dropdown.
• Guests can request blocking of VOD content based on movie rating.

Frontend

• App screen to be branded per hotel location. (both hotels are super picky about branding so we may need to submit screens for approval.)
• Front-end search functionality.
• Standard pause, play, stop, fast forward rewind functionality within the player.
• Clear pricing information
• Double confirmation for pay movies.

Technical Requirements

• Movie startup times must be under three seconds / minimum latency
• Once a guest has paid for a movie that movie remains available to them for the duration of their stay.
• Support H.264/H.265 /AAC /MP3/
• Any new app screens must be approved by the respective hotel design/marketing departments.

Out of Scope

• Any issues relating to network functionality within the hotel, these issues fall under the purview of the hotel IT department.

Challenges

• How to properly serve the media.
• What types of files to allow?
• Do we transcode using ffmpeg?

Project Plan: We will be breaking development into two sprints.

Sprint 1 Overview: The goal is to run a local streaming service without other backend functionalities simply allowing the new app frontend for VOD to stream video without the additional backend functionality.

Backend

• Videos should stream using h.265, when not possible use h.264.
• Ability for the hotel to upload and name videos as well as provide a description and rating for each uploaded video.
• Hotels should be able to provide a placeholder image for each video.
• User generated taxonomy for movies. I.e. horror, sci-fi, which can be created or can be selected from a dropdown.

Frontend

• App screen to be branded per hotel location.
• Front-end search functionality.
• Standard pause, play, stop, fast forward rewind functionality within the player.

Sprint 2 Backend:

• Some form of counter to know how many times each video has been viewed.
• Guests can request blocking of VOD content based on movie rating.
• In the event a paid movie is ordered it is added to the guest’s bill.

Frontend

• Clear pricing information, how much the movie costs, and whether it's free or not.
• Double confirmation for pay movies.

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

It was at times impossible to know who was who. We had a project manager named Gurniya, who we only one time heard from and the rest of the time it was Neha. Sudesh acts as the Chiief Technical Officer but struggled to even configure Apache or configure a database. During the 90+ days of the 21 day project they must have assigned over a dozen developers to our project but developers kept on leaving.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They were never able to achieve a single working delivery. At one point they delivered the dashboard non-working and I was able to patch it together. They kept sending APK's that didn't work at all. It got to the point we stopped telling our client about deliveries because they never worked. They were completely unable to configure apache, unable to work with MySQL, and had zero experience working with ubuntu server.

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

They had no project management style. Meetings with the major stakeholders were regularliy skipped, they used Rock for project management and they had a zero percent timeliness score. Communication only happned if we got really really mad and had to be really really mad for a few days.

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

If the success metrics were based on their aptitude as salespeople, the project would have been a success.

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

Their sales people are also their project managers, and have no skill at being project managers. They lack any unified communication strategy, they don't give updates, and their delliveries didn't ever work. Also, they contacted the client we were doing the work for and disparaged us to that client and even tried to sell our client our source code.