Curally

The Tarkenton development team approached this project in a series of stages, going from conception to a fully realized application. 

In Phase One, Tarkenton worked with Curally’s leaders to fully understand their business model and requirements. As part of the Customer Journey Map process, Tarkenton created an ideal picture of what Curally’s app should include and be able to do for the company to succeed, and how both Curally employees and program participants would use it. That paired with an analysis of the current app: its strengths, its weaknesses, and its gaps. 

The team decided to pursue the development of a Progressive Web Application that would work on all devices. In contrast to a native mobile application, the progressive web application would be able to get to market faster, allowing greater focus on getting live users and, by extension, data on their experience with the app. This would drive faster iteration and future development, with the eventual end goal of a fully native mobile application. 

As the project moved to Phase Two, Tarkenton’s UX/UI team took the lead role. They researched other similar applications, and began creating a base framework for what the new Curally app would do and how it would look, especially all of the required medical condition trackers that would be needed for program participants. Once the general wireframe was agreed upon, Tarkenton’s design team built an interactive high-fidelity prototype that included text and visuals for every screen in the app.  

In Tarkenton’s fast-moving, iterative process, this prototype was subjected to intensive user testing. After identifying a group of people that included Curally employees, current program participants, and individuals in the ideal target audience, Tarkenton conducted one-on-one interviews with each user. Testers were given a series of representative tasks to perform in various corners of the application, and then surveyed on their experience. Based on their feedback, the UX/UI and design teams then were able to make further improvements before actual development. 

These early iterations provided a boost to the technology teams. In Phase Three, Tarkenton pursued an API-First Development strategy. The software engineering team identified all necessary resources, as well as user access levels related to each resource, required to make the app function as expected. This process allowed the platform’s API to be architected using OpenAPI specification for a scalable, organized, and well-documented API before any actual application code was written. 

The project culminated in Phase Four, the coding and development of the app. While Curally had formerly used a monolithic application, for the new app Tarkenton created a microservices architecture using Kubernetes principles. Utilizing a series of two-week sprints, regularly checking-in with Curally leadership during and after each sprint, the team successfully developed the new application on time and under budget.