The client

The client is a leading Australian technology company with deep roots in the community. Its smartwatch apps have been specifically designed for families by school communication innovators. Since 2002, about 30 million parents and students in more than 3000 schools have relied on the client's school systems with 60,000 messages sent per day. Education departments across Australia and New Zealand use its technology to ensure the safety and security of children. 

The challenge

It took the client over four years of painstaking research to design and develop its smartwatch and application. However, it was inevitable that the whole development team had to be recast. They had to build a new team that could learn and adapt rapidly in order not to disrupt any of their processes. As a result, the client approached Weaver for collaboration with great expectations about expertise and technology.

The approach

Our mission. Weaver’s engineers are in charge of developing a smartwatch application for kids. Our specialists were requested to create a mobile app for iOS and Android platforms. This school-ready wearable safety device is a mobile phone built into a smartwatch, specifically designed for kids aged 5 to 12. It allows high-quality two-way phone calls and SMS messaging for children to a parent-controlled list of contacts, and GPS-tracking alerts for parents whenever children leave designated safe spaces, such as school or home.

Optimized application features. Developed by Weaver, the application has been revamped with a fresh new interface. The team strived to build additional functionality.

• HD Video calling: Video calling is a powerful tool that adds a whole new dimension to the application. The team also implemented safety measures into our video calling feature.
• Feelings feature:  For the users to choose from, the team came up with 12 feelings. Users can voluntarily send a Feelings update at any time, right from their watch simply tapping on the Feelings icon and selecting the person they want to send a Feelings update to.  Parents can see their child’s current Feelings emoji as well as their heart rate and step count, tap on the child’s profile and tap on the Feelings icon. All of these elements are working together so that we can get a comprehensive picture of the child's emotional state.
• JumpySIM:  This feature makes it as easy as possible for the users to get their smartwatches connected quickly and easily so they can get talking straight away. Almost all the client devices are compatible with JumpySIM. For reliable connections in the U.S., JumpySIM is using AT&T's networks.

State-of-the-art technology. In order to create new features, two senior full stack developers used their in-depth knowledge of .NET Core and Angular. Moreover, Kotlin and Swift were used for Android and iOS devices respectively.

Zero-downtime Migration. To increase software maintainability and streamline the development process, our team moved the whole system from SQL Server to CosmosDB. The team’s focus was to make the shift with minimal code changes and zero downtime. In addition, the strategy enabled the migration to be completed quickly to reduce the cost of running two parallel systems.

Project Management Approach. All project work was done using Agile methodology with transparent progress tracking. The team interacted directly with product owners during daily stand-ups. Daily status reports were delivered according to the mutually-created schedule. 

The result

Behind the project’s success is experienced Weaver of skilled staff relentlessly pushing new boundaries in school mobile communication systems in Australia and internationally. After 7 months, the team successfully built new application features, migrated data with zero-downtime, and supported the client on requests.

Now that the client’s technology has been recognized by independent cyber security experts as meeting the highest possible standards in data privacy, security and European GDPR regulations, it revolutionized child safety across the world.