One Big Step for One Small Society
Posted by James Keller on 19 June 2009 @ 16:42 PT
So here’s the thing… Small Society is the type of agency that believes that great people with a great idea can make a great app - but if you add just a dash of process garnered from years of experience making software, it can take that app from great to outstanding. We also fundamentally believe that in these young, Wild Wild West days of iPhone applications - having a strong process really sets us apart from many of our peers.
That being said, every once and awhile, an opportunity comes along that requires you to let go just a little bit and follow your heart.
Last week, we had the honor of having some of our work onstage at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC). The Apple keynote has found its way into pop culture - having been parodied by everyone from 30 Rock to the College Humor crew - but to an Apple fan, it’s far more than that. Leading up to the keynote most Apple fans have already spent countless hours reading up on the rumors, trying to guess what the new announcements will be. For those who are not lucky enough to attend the keynote live, most fans will endlessly hit reload as one of the big Apple sites live blogs the entire event. So for us, the geeks who have dedicated our careers to this platform, an opportunity to help build one of the keynote showcase apps is an incredibly awesome experience.
It was this opportunity that inspired us to throw our usual user-centered design process out the window and join our friends at Zipcar for a crazy five-week sprint to bring a prototype of the Zipcar application to life. Our lead developer (Jon) and our fearless leader (Raven) went through a similar sprint on the Obama ‘08 iPhone application, and so the team was confident that there was enough time to get some solid code written, but our challenge was in understanding the Zipcar customer (25% of whom have iPhones!) and what they would want from this app, while at the same time leveraging brand new technologies to highlight the iPhone 3.0 OS.
Needless to say, we were excited. The weekend before the kick-off meeting in Cambridge, Jon had already implemented MapKit as a means to locate cars. On the plane home immediately following our kick-off, I had developed a first draft of the wireframes. From there, we were iterating the app almost daily, side by side with the Zipcar team, who were providing design, server development, and moral support every step of the way.
It was a crazy timeline, and the sprint wasn’t without a few tense and tiring moments, but in the end we built something that the whole team is quite proud of. We leveraged the best of 3.0 technologies including MapKit and Push Notifications, while at the same time bringing out the brand personality of Zipcar and keeping true to the ideal iPhone user experience. Luckily, Apple was pleased with our progress.
Perhaps the most talked about feature of the prototype was the ability to honk the horn and even unlock the car. Thanks to technology already built into the Zipcar fleet, it was possible to do some pretty amazing work in an incredibly short period of time. We were also lucky enough to not only see the demo live on stage at WWDC, but help the Zipcar team demo the technology for our fellow devs inside the Moscone center on Tuesday and Wednesday of the conference. (It was also pretty cool to be trending topic on twitter, if even briefly, amid all of the other cool announcements.)
Watch the Zipcar demo at the WWDC 09 keynote
Also, check out media coverage of the demo:
Wired (http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/06/zipcar-iphone/)
Mashable (http://mashable.com/2009/06/08/iphone-30-apps/)
The Apple Blog (http://theappleblog.com/2009/06/09/zipcar-car-sharingrenting-with-your-iphone/)
We’d like to thank Apple for giving Zipcar (and us, by proxy) the opportunity to participate in the keynote, and for giving us such an awesome platform to work with. And, of course, we’d like to thank Zipcar for being an outstanding client. Not only is Zipcar changing the way we think about transportation as the largest car-sharing service in the world, but the people who work for Zipcar truly embody the company brand - they are smart, fun and passionate.
We feel lucky to have been a part of such a crazy endeavor, but are all just a tiny bit relieved to have a little extra time to catch up on all of that sleep we missed.
