Curally — Progressive Web Application Development

Industry

Healthcare

Services

• — Research and strategy
• — Software development

Outcomes

• +Development of a new progressive web application

Looking to make a major launch into the market, a nurse-led care coaching company partnered with Tarkenton to develop a new app that would better serve its participants and better reflect the company's brand identity. Tarkenton worked with the partner to take the new app from concept to reality — including strategy, UX/UI design, user testing, API-first development, and ultimately a fully functioning progressive web application built on microservices architecture using Kubernetes principles.

Leaders at the company then known as Veritas Healthcare Management believed they were ready to launch their service into a wider market. As part of their unique health offering, they had developed an app for their current clients. However, while the human side of their service was ready to scale, they would need an improved app to successfully launch.

They contacted Tarkenton for help, beginning a development project that ran in parallel to a brand relaunch changing the company's name to Curally.

Our team tackled this opportunity in four steps.

1. 01

   Phase One — Discovery & journey mapping

   Tarkenton worked with Curally's leaders to fully understand their business model and requirements. As part of the Customer Journey Map process, we 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 — paired with an analysis of the current app: its strengths, weaknesses, and gaps. The team decided to pursue a Progressive Web Application that would work on all devices. In contrast to a native mobile application, a PWA would reach market faster, allowing greater focus on getting live users and data on their experience — driving faster iteration toward an eventual fully native mobile application.

2. 02

   Phase Two — UX/UI design & testing

   Tarkenton's UX/UI team took the lead. They researched similar applications and began creating a base framework for what the new Curally app would do and how it would look — especially the medical condition trackers needed for program participants. Once the wireframe was agreed upon, our design team built an interactive high-fidelity prototype covering text and visuals for every screen. That prototype went through intensive user testing with Curally employees, current program participants, and individuals in the ideal target audience. Testers were given representative tasks and surveyed on their experience, and the UX/UI and design teams iterated before any code was written.

3. 03

   Phase Three — API-first development

   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 allowed the platform's API to be architected using OpenAPI specification — scalable, organized, and well-documented — before any application code was written.

4. 04

   Phase Four — Build the application

   The project culminated in 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. Using two-week sprints and regular check-ins with Curally leadership during and after each sprint, the team successfully developed the new application on time and under budget.

Tarkenton's work led to a complete, fully functional progressive web application in time for Curally's brand launch. The new app runs exponentially faster than the original thanks to the microservices architecture, and fully reflects Curally's new, people-oriented brand with stylistic flourishes and user-friendly design. As Curally and Tarkenton get further feedback from new users entering the application, that will drive future iteration and improvement — continually delivering an ever-better experience.

• +Development of a new progressive web application