Client story Peep Photo-Sharing App That’s Built for Growth
By Insight Editor / 10 Nov 2017 / Topics: Customer experience
Facts at a glance
Organization:
Peep
Client industry:
Social media
Challenge:
Peep wanted to make real-time, event-specific photo sharing possible across multiple device platforms while maintaining quality and speed — and beat its competitors to market.
Solution:
- Agile development
- Continuous delivery
Results
- Quick, seamless photo sharing in real time
- Scalable to millions of users
Solution area:
Insight’s Digital Innovation solutions help clients incorporate emerging tech into their business operations to improve the customer experience.
The founders of Peep had a groundbreaking idea to make real-time, event-specific photo sharing possible across mobile devices through Peep app. Although a simple project in concept, no other company had widely released a product with this differentiating feature. For that reason, time to market and confidentiality were of utmost importance.
Peep engaged Insight team to create a first release of this product, which was used to drive additional investment. The successful first release and subsequent funding drove full product development and an extensive operations and marketing budget to support a global launch.
Addressing the challenges with Peep app
There are numerous technical challenges in the design and architecture of a consumer-facing app that's expected to go viral and reach millions of users. Flexibility, scale and high availability are core considerations. The app must be fun and engaging, providing an intuitive, “sticky” user experience.
The photo-sharing aspect brings particular performance and responsiveness challenges as the app must maintain quality and speed while sharing photos of different sizes across diverse devices in near-real time.
The architecture must support multiple platforms — in this case, iOS and Android for the first phase — and multiple operating system versions within those platforms. High security is critical: The app must protect users, information and content while giving them the power to connect with each other, create groups and share content at a granular level.
The solution: Continuous delivery
The race to market required an Agile development model, which meant continuous delivery of a consistently production-ready app with enhancements on a three-week cycle. The tight time frame demanded an absolute focus on the most important and essential features, as well as attentive management of the desires and requirements of a variety of stakeholders.
The balance of feature inclusion, performance and quality, and cost-effectiveness and time to market are the iron triangle constraining any application development project. In Peep's case, the added factors of high confidentiality, intense competition and potentially huge visibility constituted a project that could only be successful in the hands of mature and deeply experienced software architects and designers.
“Right from the beginning, they designed our application as a platform that could expand in capabilities and scale to millions of users,” says Bob Jones, chief operating officer of Peep, in reference to Insight's Digital Innovation team.
Peep this app: The vision becomes reality
When Peep was conceived, no existing social media platform or photo-sharing app permitted groups to share their photos selectively in real time. Peep allows groups of all sizes to exchange photos quickly and seamlessly in real time — for example, at a birthday party, concert or corporate function.
These private, shared galleries, or Peeps, can only be joined by request or invitation. Photos can be accessed and saved from the Peep, eliminating the post-event scramble to collect and combine the photos taken by individuals in the group.
Insight's “been a great partner, teaming with Peep and working hard to create a product that we can all be proud of,” Jones says. “I came out of retirement for this project, and I can’t imagine a better group of people to go through all the ups and downs of a development project.”
