The Development Process of Advanced Interview Recording System: iRecord Universe

The Project

Several years ago, an ambitious project was set before the SWAN team; the creation of a new generation of modern software for recording an interview. The customer, iRecord, already had a large infrastructure from a previous generation of systems. However, the development potential of the current system was exhausted as it was out of date. The software system, Visual Basic 6, did not meet the challenges of the time.

The SWAN team had to create – from scratch – a new software all while ensuring the full transition of thousands of existing user data to the new platform.  SWAN was also tasked to provide support for the entire existing technology and hardware user capabilities in the form of different types of cameras, microphones, sensors, computers, etc.  For this reason, the team had to take into account a significant number of limitations and features of the current iRecord system.

Discovering

The development of a new system, now called iRecord Universe, began with a detailed investigation of the existing version of iRecord. A series of technical interviews were conducted with the employees of the customer-company. A vital part of this process was the research, specification, and documentation of all the functional capabilities of the current system. Furthermore, the formats of user data storage (on test copies) were researched in detail.

The next step was the stage of collecting and analyzing the requirements for the revised iRecord Universe. This incorporated each function of the new system as well as the additional wishes and requirements of the customer.

Designing

At the beginning of the design phase, a complete set of wireframes were created that schematically described the user interface with a detailed specification of their controls. SWAN’s UI/UX experience teams created a simple and clear interface for the end-user with the entire set of functions incorporated into the system.

In addition, the SWAN team analyzed modern software tools and technologies to implement into the new generation of iRecord Universe. This would prove to provide a long cycle of smooth developments and improvements in the future.

Developing

From the first days of development, the Agile methodology was applied. During the active phase of the development, a team of developers were working based on 2-week sprints. This allowed the customer to receive a new ready-made functionality at the end of each sprint as well as give them the flexibility to adjust priorities at the beginning of each new sprint.

Delivering

The first version of iRecord Universe (1.0) was released in 2015 after a year of active development. Later on, a large number of updates were released which brought new functionality and various improvements along with it. The initial design and architecture of iRecord Universe allowed for a “smooth” update of the software infrastructure. Currently, the team is preparing for the release of iRecord Universe 3.0.

Do you have a project or idea but you don’t know what the next step is? Contact the Swan Wedge team for a free technical discovery roadmap to get you started!