The Need: An app that can motivate people into reducing their carbon footprint
Committed to fostering an environment-friendly and sustainable future, swrm (formerly Edwel Energy) wanted to create an app that will promote their advocacy and engage the public into changing wasteful habits and reducing carbon footprint. swrm visualized the app as a platform where manufacturers and retailers could also contribute to the establishment of an energy-efficient ecosystem. While swrm already has a website and an energy calculator, they wanted a platform that will make information more meaningful, insightful, and easily accessible. Oursky developed an iOS app that realized swrm’s goals and put them in everyday users’ pockets.
Oursky’s Strategy: An app that delivers meaningful information online and offline
We worked with swrm to create an energy footprint tracker app that can monitor the carbon footprint of a user’s everyday activities. Since it’s a data- and task-based app, its UI/UX was designed to be simple so users can easily track the impact of activities. We further streamlined the app’s main features by enabling users to get information by scanning product barcodes.
As it’s an iOS app that will be used worldwide, we designed it to overcome network communication issues by minimizing the app’s need to connect to the backend to load data. We fine-tuned its performance by enabling quick queries in the local database and optimizing data structures, so users can still browse through the app while updating data. We conducted several benchmarking tests to ensure data is delivered as fast as possible. We used Skygear as the backend and cloud platform for deployment and as its content management system.
The Result: Streamlined app development at a fraction of the cost
Skygear played an important role in speeding up the development process while lowering costs. The swrm app received positive feedback from users, particularly its quality and usability. Oursky used honeycombs as the app’s main visuals, and swrm’s team was so happy with the design that it was incorporated in their website and social media.
Learn more about our technical approach to this project in our blog post!
It was noticeable that Oursky not only wanted to complete our App but ensure it was a success. This can be shown in the zero crashes that our first version has had. Everyone who has used the App has commented on the high quality for an MVP.
— Benjamin Gilkes, Director of Edwel Energy
