Mobile Social Networking.
In 25 days.
Vishnu Gopal
vish.in

Me:
Technical Lead, MobME.

A real world case study

of rewriting a stubborn old
application

and making it new, pretty
and usable.

1 designer. 1 developer.
1 sweeper. 25 days.

OLD MOBSHARE
PHOTOS, VIDEOS, AUDIO, BLOGS, CLUBS, PEOPLE, SPOTLIGHT, HALL OF FAME, INVITE

NEW MOBSHARE
SLIDER, PHOTOS, VIDEOS, PEOPLE, UPLOAD, SIGNUP, FEATURED PHOTOS/VIDEOS, ACTIVE USERS

How we did it

Lessons learnt

Mistakes made

Interlude: Background

Poor design and usability.

Slow site.

Confusing.
Too many features.

OLD MOBSHARE
PHOTOS, VIDEOS, AUDIO, BLOGS, CLUBS, PEOPLE, SPOTLIGHT, HALL OF FAME, INVITE

Was not sellable.

We (re)started with the
vision.

A place where anybody
can share media taken on
a mobile.

Cut down on the features:
Photos, Videos,
Social Networking,
Mobile interaction.

Less is more.
Do less, but do it better.

Made mockups of the
whole site design.

MOBSHARE MOCKUP
POWERPOINT MOCKUP OF THE PROFILE PAGE.

HTMLized the Mockup
ASAP.

DESIGN NEUTRAL HTML
HTMLIZED VERSION OF THE VIEW PAGE.

outsourced rest of the
work to a design firm

FINAL DESIGN
PRETTY MUCH EXACTLY TO SPEC.

High Level Technology
Choices:
PHP, Symfony framework
Standard LAMP servers
Factory in Ruby

Had lots of choices:
RAILS / DJANGO,
LIGHTTPD / NGINX
Decided on Familiar over
‘Better’

Fast turnaround needs
agile and small teams.

Clear separation of work

Developer, Designer and
One Person to Roam
Around Between the Two
Roles (Sweeper)

Definite milestones

Do or die, we kept to those
milestones.

Daily Communication with
management through
EODs.

Mistakes

Didn’t get reliable servers.

Didn’t plan for continuity.

Not enough
documentation.

No Unit Tests.

Praise: George Brody
It looks FANTASTIC!! The
team has done a great job
on the whole user
experience part.

NEW MOBSHARE
SLIDER, PHOTOS, VIDEOS, PEOPLE, UPLOAD, SIGNUP, FEATURED PHOTOS/VIDEOS, ACTIVE USERS

Sellable.

Proud.

Questions?
Register at
www.mobshare.in
& send MMS to
me@mobshare.in