Social network mobile app

Applying enterprise level experience and thinking to deliver a start up app

Client Torqn
Sector Mining
Model Squad team

Overview

Torqn is an innovative new platform & app that connects people in the Mining Industry based on the commodities they mine, and the equipment they own, use, fix or make.

The app has been designed and developed in house here at Mudbath in close collaboration with the Torqn team. It’s no small feat to build a social network from the ground up and it’s taken a team of skilled product, designers, developers and QAs to realise the product vision.

Visit the Torqn website

Technology

React Native - Expo
.NET Core 6
Firebase Authentication
Firebase Remote Config
Docker
Kafka
KSQL
CosmosDB
MSSQL
Github Actions
Octopus Deploy
Elastic Search
Confluent
Ontraport

The Opportunity

Create a global platform for in-depth discussion about equipment

Founders Troy McDonald and Brett Baker and identified this opportunity after extensive careers within the mining industry. They realised that there was no one platform connecting users directly to the equipment they use. It’s about combining the best bits of social media, forums and a knowledge base, to cut through the noise and surfacing meaningful information.

"The partnership with Mudbath has been a fantastic experience. Their team's expertise in digital transformation, enterprise architecture, and cross-platform mobile development helped us deliver a product that functions seamlessly and scales globally. We couldn't have done it without them."

Troy McDonald Co-founder | Torqn

The Challenge

Balancing a startup mindset with the vision to expand globally

This meant applying an enterprise mindset early on, rather strictly MVP (Minimum Viable Product) focused. Quality was a key guiding principle. To be a competitor in the social media space meant providing a quality product that meets and exceeds the expectations of other platforms.

We kept the end vision in mind through design and delivery, future proofing the tech stack through cloud infrastructure to ensure global growth that was supported.

Our Process

Combining user experience, product strategy and solutions architecture expertise

When Brett and Troy came to us they already had great concept and the core ideas for the platform. We ran our Scoping workshop which help to narrow down on the problem and opportunities that we are solving, who they’re solving it for and how we can create user satisfaction and delight.

We defined user personas which were the basis of the experience and product decisions. This allowed us to plan out the features and releases that aligned to our user’s needs, wants and desires.

Prototyping & user validation

We created a mobile app prototype that allowed the audience and potential investors to experience what the end product would become, before even touching a line of code. By using Axure’s advanced prototyping techniques we were able to provide personalisation and a data driven feed.

The result was a realistic app experience fast, that unlocked huge insights in user testing and was a pathway to securing over A$3 million in private funding.

PRODUCT REFINEMENT

Testing desirability and usability

Taking the interactive prototype we conducted user testing with engineers, operators and service providers all who work within the mining industry.

The results from this testing showed people wanted the app and also highlighted opportunities for improvement. These user insights drove key changes in our user stories to ensure we were meeting the needs and expectations of our users.

INSIGHTS

Users made it through the onboarding seamlessly
The relevance tagging concept of Torqn was understood
Safety information was the most important to users, and it was easy to find in the prototype
User profile information is key to create trust through in the advice that is shared

Funding secured

A$3 million raised by private investors

After 12 months the Torqn team came back in rebranded and fresh with a successful capital raise. The concept was validated by the backing of leaders within the mining industry. Torqn’s impressive pitch deck was greatly assisted by our interactive mobile app prototype, which brought the concept to life.

CONTINUOUS DELIVERY

Designing a system for scale

To reflect the values of the brand and the audience, we designed a clean and functional design language, with flair in the right places. Dark mode was included from day one to ensure the environments, where people would be using the app, were catered for.

The Revolution Design System was created to supercharge design and enable component driven development. This design system formed the basis of the interfaces and enabled the team to work fast and collaboratively. Taking the time to set up this design system meant that new product features could be delivered by quickly leveraging our previous thinking and efforts.

Product strategy and release planning

Our Product team ran sessions to dive into the roadmap and define the stories that would align to our persona’s jobs to be done. These sessions really ensured that we had clear value for each of the stories in the roadmap. These sessions aligned Torqn and Mudbath closely and help us tease out the requirements.

This enabled us to form release plans that delivered the right features at the right time. Release planning isn’t set and forget and over the course of the project these plans changed to deliver the most value for our users.

THE TECH STACK

Cloud based architecture allows growth and scale

We built the app in react native so it could be cross platform allowing one code base to be used to deliver to multiple app stores. This meant we could make fast changes to both Android and iOS. Our architecture paired with the Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) build pipeline allowed us to make fast updates to production. We used feature toggling to enable the testing audiences access to different features.

Baked in security features protects user data and the smart management of media transcoding and storage to delivers photos and videos effectively. Enterprise grade event sourcing enables high performance and responsiveness while maintaining data consistency. Smart searching capability enables large datasets to be quickly indexed and searched, which is very important for our users.

Quality Assurance was assisted by comprehensive automated unit testing as well as manual acceptance criteria and design validation.

RELEASE TO MARKET

It’s out in the wild

Torqn launched in the App Store and the Google Play store on December 20, 2022.

We’ll be closely monitoring the performance on key flows like sign-up, onboarding, posting and key interactions so we can identify conversion rates and look for improvements based on data.

We look forward to partnering with Torqn to support the app, develop future releases and creating new products.

Download the app today

Get in touch

Interested in learning more about our work with Torqn or any other projects?

Let’s create something together

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