Product Development – Bermuda Tree Frog News and Alerts
Client Overview
Bermuda is a small nation in the Atlantic Ocean with a population of about 65,000 people. The island is known for its pink-sand beaches.
Challenge
The Government of Bermuda wanted a better way to engage with their citizens. An already tight-knit community with a proud heritage, the Government knew it was important to keep people informed of things going on around the island.
Through a public RFP, the Government solicited bids for the development of a mobile app to help with this problem. They wanted to take their existing process for publishing information on their website and seamlessly fit a mobile app into it.
They didn't want to change the process for creating content, only extend it to mobile app users through push notifications, filters, and news feeds.
The Government also wanted to get the students at Bermuda College hands-on experience with mobile app development. Since the students had no professional experience in the space, the Government wanted their vendor to work with the students to prepare them for careers in software development.
Solution
In order for us to provide the best possible mobile experience, we needed to get the content from the web into a workable format for the app. To accomplish this, we built infrastructure that watched for new news, events, and alerts to be published on the website. This would then pick up the content, reformat it if necessary, and put it in a datastore.
Due to bandwidth limitations, we needed to be really concerned about read performance in this application. To provide the best experience in that, we turned to Elastic. Elastic houses the information stored that the mobile app uses in order to populate the news feeds.
Throughout this process, we used Expo Go to build the mobile app, which provided collaboration between us and the Bermuda College students. Twice per week, we would get online with them and write a small portion of the application. The students were able to use Expo Go to test the code that we were writing. During this process they would ask questions, gather feedback, and provide suggestions on things for the app.
Technology
- React-native
- Elastic
- TypeScript
- Javascript
- Hapi.js
- Expo
- AWS
Results
The application has been live since 2019. While live, the Government has used it to distribute shelter and safety information during a hurricane, and it has been in continuous use by the citizens. During a hurricane in 2020, the app saw a 2000% increase in usage over a 7 day span with 0 downtime.
Client Reviews
Stats Section
In 2019, Bermuda used Tree Frog to distribute shelter and safety information during a hurricane.
2000%
increase in usage over a 7 day span
0 downtime
in a 7 day period
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