Tracky Mobile

Track your family

• 2 months, ongoing
• http://www.tracky-mobile.com/en/

The client

The project was created in cooperation with Tom Hemansk who was the first to come up with the idea.

The idea

The big idea was to create a service that would allow tracking of mobile devices (typically other family members, mainly children). The tracking should also support tracking of "off-line" devices with no Internet connection at the time. Because of the focus as a children tracking app the project also supports messaging to devices. Unlinke the competitor already in the market the focus was to support any device with any SIM regardless of network operator.

Our work

Our task included transforming the idea into a proof-of-concept version, analysis of the domain, design of website and mobile app. We also implemented the whole tracking concept for Android mobile platform. The tracked data, messaging and settings of the accounts are handled using responsively designed website that supports any device with a browser.

The service offers free of charge trial as well as prepaid premium plans.

Target group

o
• families (parents)
o
• companies in logistics
o
• companies with sales representatives

The story

Because we were aware of variuos high-probablity risks associated with the project we first agreed to create a simple proof-of-concept version to check our assumptions.

As anticipated we actually had to overcome many issues:

o
• tracking itself on Android platforms with support of multiple location providers (GPS, network, wifi, etc.)
o
• precision of gathered data when environment changes occur (e.g. a person entered the building and lost GPS signal; wifi signal got lost etc.)
o
• on-line/off-line synchronization of gathered location data when internet connection gets available
o
• battery consumption (aggresive tracking causes mobile device battery to drain really quickly)

We also wanted, as always, the service to be secure, fast, simple and usable.

Based on our analysis we also picked a few practical "cherries":

o
1. We decided to go responsive with the website to support all devices that can access it (including tablets and smartphones). It was a really good decision that saved quite a lot of the client's budget.
o
2. Because we plan to support other platforms (probably iOS and Windows Phone) we created a universal API layer to support various platforms as well as various versions of the app on the same platform in case the requirements change in the future.
o
3. During the beta testing we quickly understood the need to support adding the same device on multiple accounts. Because we also wanted the service to remain secure, we introduced concept of pairing codes to prevent misuse.

Having all of this in mind we iteratively designed and developed the whole concept.

© 2013-2014 Simple Dino s.r.o. All rights reserved.