Loci Amica

Brief Introduction

The creators of KitchenPal (another successful project we delivered) recommended SmartDev to Mr. Huang, a prestigious canadian entrepreneur for the development of his traveler app: Loci Amica.

LA’s mission is to connect international travelers to local tour guides in Taiwan. The company’s ambitious intention is to let people skip the traditional tourist trap tour services found in every city and country around the world.

Main Challenge

The real-time aspect of such a platform is challenging. The content of each tour as well as their pricing must be reliable. Any last minute change has to be communicated and notified on time.

Another vital aspect of that app was the payment gateway.

Solution

SmartDev decided to use React Native for mobile app development for the following reasons:

• Large developer community
• Pre-built components
• Modular Architecture & Declarative coding style
• Code once, use in iOS and Android
• Faster development supported by live reloading
• Reduced variety of required skills
• Large selection of 3rd-party libraries

To meet the real-time requirements associated with the project, we opted for Firebase because of the following key benefits:

• We didn’t need to worry about the creation of a custom backend architecture and maintenance
• Real-time data synchronization supported
• Faster and more reliable than a custom backend
• Faster queries (No SQL database)
• Social network login supported
• Push notification supported.
• Analytics and crash reports
• Cloud storage
• Test Lab

SmartDev recommeded Stripe as a payment gateway for:

• Its easy integration in the React Native app with https://stripe.com/docs/stripe-js/react. 
• Lower fees
• Great compatibility with Firebase.

The Journey

The kick-off

In their first e-mail, Loci Amica briefly explained their needs and shared their design specifications to get a quote from us. Our team at SmartDev evaluated the specifications in a meeting with our project managers and technical leaders, and after breaking down the tasks, we estimated the amount of work required for the first version of the product, in terms of the team size and timeframe needed to achieve it.

The project development phase

After signing the contract and assigning a dedicated team to the project, we could get started with the development of the product.

During the development phase of any project, we have regular meetings and report to the client to create full transparency and build mutual trust. This includes:

• Audio Calls
• Status e-mails and reporting
• Review sessions
• Sprint retrospectives

Deliverables

To ensure top-notch quality assurance and avoid bottlenecks and the domino effect, all tickets are tested immediately during the development phase. Our technical leads handle the submission of apps to the Google Play Store and Apple Store. We also have a DevOps who is in charge of deploying the solution in the production environment.

Conclusion

Loci Amica was very pleased with our collaboration. They appreciated having the continuous and proactive involvement of SmartDev from the early phase of the implementation right up until the final delivery to the market.