.png)
Approach behind Technology Decisions at Ador
Even before roadmapping MVP, Ador in its most conceptual format required taking series of decisions
The core proposition of connecting individuals based on similar interests can be validated using various ways. Some of these ways include:
Forming a Google Form or Type form -> Sending it to a bunch of individuals to enable their seamless connections
Getting Individuals connect on Airtable -> Sending list of Email id and Contact Details of community members on Airtable and connecting based on various filters
Building a website with login / signup feature
Building a mobile app -> IOS / Android
Using zoom meets / google meets to connect individuals on one-to-one sessions
The major factors important for consideration while taking the first decision were:
Enabling seamless flow of connections and building profiles
Having least human intervention
Ensuring privacy and confidentiality of individuals is ensured
Having events based tracking to measure core performance
High level way of connecting individuals based on interests and personality
All these factors led to considering point 4 ->
Building a mobile application as the best suited option
While builiding a mobile application requires its own set of decisions, the primary requirement comprised of testing the core proposition.
Before deciding high level features, the major step included deciding user-personas
The core factors of user-personas included commonalities:
Two age-groups from 18-24 years and 25-32 years
Pursuing or looking to pursue any interest and hobby
Having smartphone with high speed internet connections
Digital savvy and having understanding of different mobile apps
Looking for affordable but having aspirational option in terms of core product
Core geography for connecting with each other -> India
In India, there are 90% Android Users.
It comprises of young audience who is pursuing education or recently joined workforce.
Most of them are price conscious and uniformly present across
Metro, Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities of India.
While 10% smartphone users in India are on IOS, there is a limited scope of building a mass market product. A chunk of them have travel plans out of India and have very short visit in home country.
For mass-market considerations looking for affordable options, Android came out to be the first priority for implementation.
The second stage comprised of implementing Native vs Hybrid technology.
Hybrid type of methodology is implemented when there is mobile application deployed in both platforms - IOS and Android.
It simplifies code handling and code editing. While it also increases load time and hence mobile app speed, the scalablity factors are also important to be considered.
On the other hand, Native is methodology of deploying mobile application in one platform.
It has lesser load time and good mobile app functioning.
The code handling and code editing for both the platforms is maintained separately.
While it increases workforce requirement, the app functioning is seamless ensuring good user experience. It also caters to scalability factors as the number of users grow.
While the core focus for deployment was for Indian users looking for aspirational appeal with affordable options, Android came out to be the topmost priority.
Since Android was priority for time-being and the core proposition was to be evaluated while providing a user-friendly experience - Native was selected by default.
The step-wise flow of decision making included :
Mobile / Smartphones -> Android -> Native
Next stage included deciding technology stack for mobile application.
It comprised of the following aspects:
Selecting Front End, Back End, Database and Cloud Hosting
Connections platform require higher response rate and there are multiple connections, messages, activities happening in the same time-frame.
Node JS ( Run Time envrionment of javascript ) provides these capabilities to handle number of events at the same time. It is the best suited option for Connections Platform.
Since MVP required preliminary database requirements with capacity to handle data across various variables, MySQL which provides free way of managing database came out as core selection. This was later shifted to Mongo DB as number of users increased and higher connections were required to be made.
Cloud Hosting was done on AWS - Amazon Web services. AWS provides affordibility, rekognition technology, database management and suite of offerings best suited for ensuring scaling, privacy and efficient cloud hosting.
Finally, Android Studio came out as primary way to build front end of Mobile App. The inbuilt libraries provide way to track user-location, manage
All events conducted by users can be tracked on Google Fire-base. Event tracking was one of the important factors since it validates the core hypothesis and value proposition.
The prototype/ wireframe was built on Figma - the various UI/UX considerations were hypothized on FIGMA app.
The step-wise flow of decision making included :
Front End -> Android Studio
Database -> MySQL which was later shifted to MongoDB
Backend -> Node JS
UI/UX and wire-framing -> FIGMA
Event Tracking -> Google Fire-base
Cloud Hosting -> Amazon Web Services
Backend -> Node JS