HOW JIBJAB LAUNCHED ANDROID APP AT FACEBOOK CONFERENCE IN JUST 4 WEEKS AND GOT OVER A MILLION DOWNLOADS. Over a downloads in just 4 weeks

Transcription

1

2 HOW JIBJAB LAUNCHED ANDROID APP AT FACEBOOK CONFERENCE IN JUST 4 WEEKS AND GOT OVER A MILLION DOWNLOADS Over a downloads in just 4 weeks Solutions: Mobile Android Industry: Entertainment

3 JIBJAB Marina Del Ray, California jibjab.com JibJab is a digital media company dedicated to making funny things worth sharing. JibJab has been pioneering online entertainment production and distribution since From political satires like the 2004 smash hit This Land to offbeat ecards and personalized Starring You! videos. Their insanely audacious goal is to make billions of people happy. The company consists of the best artists, comedians, writers, musicians, performers, technologists and business people to produce world-class original entertainment on the Internet.

4 JIBJAB JibJab was chosen to develop a showcase app for Facebook Messenger's debut at Facebook's annual conference F7. JibJab had a large library of amusing animations which were converted to GIFs and allowed you to superimpose a face on the animation. The idea was to make a stand-alone app - JibJab Messages. JibJab already had an ios application at the time, so it was just the Android project. They had around four weeks to develop the v1 of the Android app which we helped them with.

5 WHY ITREX GROUP? My friends in the Los Angeles tech scene pointed me their way. I think that's how I connected with the ITRex Group. Initially, we were on a tight deadline, so we didn't do much searching and comparing prices. ITRex had competitive rates. They also had good word-of-mouth recommendations from people I trusted. It was a quick let's go and do this, especially given our timelines. v We were looking for ways to augment our in-house engineering team and build out a mobile app. Our team did not have a lot of expertise on Android, so we asked the ITRex Group to help us out. Mike Bracco, Director of Product, JibJab

6 CHALLENGE pt.1 The client had already made significant progress on its ios version, but were struggling to catch up on Android. Android posed significant challenges such as chip compatibility issues for the OpenGL rendering library as well as variations in built in camera functionality, to name a couple. ITRex team was working with a pre-release beta version of Facebook's product, putting developers in uncharted waters. The team had to work with an existing collection of animated art and a corresponding meta-data, which posed performance and scalability challenges to be overcome early on. Developers faced large numbers of irreproducible bugs and untraceable crash reports due to the sheer volume of devices running code and it's dependencies, all of which had been built in a very short amount of time. Variations across Android platforms, devices and cameras complicated features such as cropping and positioning the user's face in the animations.

7 CHALLENGE pt.2 Another challenge was animating the main view, which was a gridview of animations. One should be able to scroll rapidly and every cell begins animating. While this was one and done on ios, on Android team had the additional challenge of separating known compatible device types and animating the view depending on known performance. Our deadlines were self-imposed since we had to hit internal targets for release in our holiday season. The project took about six months in total. It started around May 2015 a and then took about a year more or less. It was from May of last year to March of this year [2016]. Mike Bracco, Director of Product, JibJab

8 CHALLENGE pt.3 Correct work of OpenGL at various Android devices Working with pre-release beta version of Facebook product Rich animation and user interface

9 SOLUTION pt.1 There was good communication and collaboration between the client's in-house team and our team, allowing progress to be made around the clock as the teams worked across timezones to meet an extremely tight deadline. We assigned a project manager who was the go-between director of product of JibJab and our team of engineers. He did a good job of pairing the talent on his team with specific needs of client. We were able to find resources that align with the skill sets required. That made things more efficient. We had weekly sprints, and they would accommodate for the time difference. 10 months Duration 10 person-months Efforts

10 SOLUTION pt.2 They worked very well with our team, almost like in-house employees. They adopted our tools, like Slack, JIRA, and GitHub. They were able to jump right in and get going quickly. a Mike Bracco, Director of Product, JibJab Technologies:

11 ITREX TEAM Several factors made this project especially demanding. First that it was using an experimental platform that had not come out of private beta. Second the release was a very high profile moment for the company but would only be promoted if it was up to working quality and free of major bugs. Third, the call for help on this project came late in the game and we had to work around the clock to meet the deadline. After the conference, the on-site and offshore teams went into a steady flow of development, working as one scrum team. The company would later redesign the original app over several iterations, but the first version that launched at the FB conference marked it's public debut in the mobile space, and the team in Eastern Europe was critical in making this happen. Shervin Delband, Partner, ITRex Group

12 RESULTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS pt.1 Now JibJab Messages has stickers and GIFs (moving pictures) that can be personalized, like the JibJab e-cards, with friends' faces shot on the phone or taken from the photo library. You can see your face in funny situations, like a dancing hot dog, a shredding guitarist or in the body of a cat, which user can dress up with Instagram-like filters, add text, and then send it right out, via a text message, or as a post on Facebook, Twitter, or via a link.

13 RESULTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS pt.2 Upon it's debut, the app experienced viral growth with over a 100,000 downloads in the first few months. Our team continued to work with their in-house team which they later expanded. We were involved in supporting the app after it's launch. dollars K downloads in Google Play after launching rating

14 TESTIMONIAL See full review on Clutch The code quality was great. We do code reviews internally, and it was nice not to have to spend as much time back and forth on revisions. The only reason we paused working with them was because we shifted our focus toward ios. If we hadn't done that, then we'd probably be continuing to work with them. We ended up having a great, trusting relationship with the ITRex Group. I was impressed with how they aligned their resources to our specific needs. Everything was done in an efficient way so that there wasn't as much ramp-up time compared with external contractors. They also had the flexibility to adapt to our workflow. They were definitely accommodating. Overall, we had a super-easy working relationship. Mike Bracco, Director of Product, JibJab

15 LET S BUILD SOMETHING GREAT TOGETHER. IT'S SIMPLE! Tell us your idea or need using the contact form. We will contact you shortly and discuss. We will share our experience and prepare a proposal (free estimates). Call us or hello@itrexgroup.com Want more case studies? Follow to

16 WHY ITREX GROUP? WE ARE TALENTED AND DEDICATED TEAM OF IT PROFESSIONALS. We are a group of professional software development/maintenance engineers with more than 9 years of experience in delivering superior products and custom solutions. Clients say we deliver on 11 reviews 5 stars We are nominated for Incredible status on 70k hours >100 projects 5 stars

17 WE CAN HELP YOU. GET A QUOTE FOR FREE! Minsk, BY Kyiv, UA Shervin Delband, Partner shervin.delband@itrexgroup.com shervin.delband Yury Korvel, Partner yury.korvel@itrexgroup.com yury_korvel Santa Monica, CA, USA