Locked & Linked

How a company provided a way for photos to be shared safely and securely.

The Idea

It is estimated more photos are now taken every two minutes than were taken in the entirety of the 19th century.

It’s not surprising when one realizes that taking a photo in the early days of photography was a complicated and multi-step process. Now, roughly 92.5% of photos are captured with smartphones.

Photography used to be limited to special occasions such as weddings, a rare family portrait, or even a last chance to capture a loved one’s face after death.

Thankfully, we’ve moved on from the time when post-mortem photography was practiced as a last ditch effort to preserve a loved one’s face.

Now, we can capture seven hundred photos before breakfast–and include images of our breakfast too.

But, what happens to all these photos? Most will remain on the smartphones of those who snapped them. Some will be shared on social media, but many people don’t feel safe sharing their photos on a social media site, and many people on their friend list might not want to see every random photo of their trip to Bulgaria.

One company saw the problem and decided to solve it.

They would create a designated app that would allow users to safely and easily share their photos with only the people with whom they wished to share them.

The Client

The client had created an app that allowed users to store, organize, and share their photos. Whether the user was an individual or a family, their digital photos could be preserved and/or shared without sacrificing privacy. The client’s cutting-edge technology and user-centric features prioritized security, ease of use, and accessibility. The client had an existing application for iOS.

Differentiators

Privacy-Centered Approach

The client’s application was different from competitors due to its focus on secure, private photo sharing–without the distractions or risks of social media.

Simple and Sophisticated

The app balanced robust functionality with a straightforward and user-friendly interface.

Tailored for Connection

The app wanted to provide a family-centric experience, which could foster deeper connections through shared memories in a secure environment.

Primary Features

Secure Storage

Photos are stored in an encrypted format, which ensures that users’ photos are protected from unauthorized access.

Private Sharing

Unlike social media platforms, the application offered a controlled and private environment for photo sharing. Users could select who has access to specific photos or albums, so work friends could be allowed access to photos for the Christmas party without having access to labor photos.

User-Friendly Interface

The app was intuitive and easy to navigate. Features such as drag-and-drop organization, customizable albums, and simple sharing options made it accessible for users of all ages and tech skills.

Seamless Access

The application allowed syncing across devices, so users could access ensuring that users could access photos from their preferred device whether that was a smartphone, tablet, or computer.

Memory Preservation

The applications main goal was to help users preserve and enjoy the memories captured in their photos. It featured tagging, date-based sorting, and optional cloud storage for backup and retrieval.

The Assessment

The client had already created and released their application for iOS, but the app wasn’t available for Android. The client company approached Swan to request an assessment for a Fixed Bid Project.

Assumptions

Application will be developed using the existing API, which will provide all necessary functionality.
Android application will contain the same features as iOS version.
Design is not included in estimation.
Billing information is not included in assessment, because it isn’t working in iOS application.

Architecture

Instabug Android SDK for bug reporting

Walgreens Android SDK for photo printing

Timeline

1620-1780 Estimate Hours
Daily Scrum

Formal Weekly Calls with Product Owner

Team

Three Developers
Quality Assurance Staff

Project Manager
Account Manager

User Stories

A wide variety of user stories needed to be created along with acceptance criteria for each created user story. Some user stories included–

As a user, I should be able to view the short tutorial of how to use the app.

As a user, I should see the text description of the rules of the app.

As a user, I should be able to attach social media accounts to my profile and also next button.

As a user, I should be able to swipe down( gesture: swipe from up to down) and delete photo by this gesture.

As a user, I should be able to pause slider by 1 finger tap on the home screen and resume slider by tapping again.

As a developer, I should have an API request which will return all photos.

As a user, I should be able to tap on one of the albums in the albums list and receive the album view.

As a developer, I should have an API request with will return all shared with me photos

As a user, I should be able to tap change the cover and select the photo for the album cover.

As a developer, I will have an API call which I should call when the icon will be checked and call when the icon will be unchecked.

Development Sprints

After the user stories had been created and acceptance criteria established, individual stories were grouped together within two-week sprints. Developers would work on completing each individual story contained in the sprints within the two-week cycle.

Stories were assigned a priority, and the most important stories were assigned the highest priority.

The status of each story was consistently updated to establish when the story was closed.

Stories were also assigned Story Points. More complex stories would require more story points. Some sprints contained more story points than others.

Throughout development bugs would crop up. Information about what these bugs were and the issues they were

creating was added to the list of stories.

The bugs were also assigned a status of major or trivial.

As Agile incorporates quality assurance throughout the development process, each discovered bug became a part of the sprint log and allowed developers and QA engineers to continue to track and close user stories and bugs.

Additionally, desired improvements could be added to the list of tasks to be completed within a sprint cycle.

Although rare, incomplete tasks and bugs could be rolled over to be completed during the next sprint cycle.

Results

By the end of the project, the client company had achieved both their primary goal and secondary goal.

Primary Goal

The client’s primary goal was to broaden their reach by allowing the app to be downloaded on Android phones instead of only being available of iPhones. With Android making up a far larger percentage of the market, creating the app so that it could be available on more than just the Apple Store was a wise choice. The project allowed the client to be accessible to and serve more customers and grow their business.

Secondary Goal

While the application was created to allow the safe and easy sharing of photographs, the client company wanted to expand to allow the same safety and ease for users who wished to also share videos with one another. While they were not yet ready to release the video feature, they did want to make sure that the applications for both iPhone and Android were ready and able to allow this feature to be released when they so wished.