Sprout At Work

A Health and Wellness Social Media App Built with Ionic Framework and PhoneGap

“We weren’t sure if we wanted to develop a hybrid mobile application, as opposed to going Native, but after seeing Rangle.io’s work, we realized it was the right direction. We used Angular and Ionic Framework, and got our product on multiple platforms and devices much faster by using an Agile approach. Since working with Rangle.io, we’ve been able to take an iterative approach and have continued to improve our app as we’ve tested it with our user community.”

— Andrey Feldman, VP product, Sprout

Sprout at Work is a health and wellness application driving employee participation in healthy lifestyle choices. The app, for both web and mobile, includes components of gamification such as goal setting, personal-best challenges and team competitions.

A unique opportunity for collaboration

In 2013, Sprout released the first version of their mobile experience, however, it lacked a depth of features and robust user experience. It was a PHP-based mobile-optimized website and it had a number of limitations: poor user experience; slow app performance (as a result of server-generated HTML and heavy use of JQuery); and high operations and maintenance costs. In 2014, Sprout sought out a partner to redevelop their hybrid HTML5 mobile application, and decided to work with Rangle.io.

To accommodate Sprout’s customer-focused business strategy, agility and timeliness to market, Rangle.io helped develop Sprout’s hybrid mobile app using AngularJS, Ionic framework, and an integrated agile development process.

Success in the Achievement of Key Goals

To complete the project the collaborative working group achieved the following:

  • Amazing user experience that was consistent and extensible for different clients.
  • Rapid speed to market (within 14 weeks), and the ability to update the software based on user feedback.
  • Ease of maintenance for the Sprout development team after hand-off.
  • Support for multiple corporate mobile platforms within a reasonable budget for building and maintaining the app (Windows Phone and Blackberry support included).
  • Good performance on older corporate phones, including Android 2.3.
  • Alignment of the mobile app with the website’s shift to AngularJS, including the reuse of key design elements and infrastructure.

Selection of the Right Technology Platform

With Rangle.io’s guidance and feedback, Sprout recognized early on that taking a hybrid HTML5 application approach was most compelling to solve their business needs. With the entire web ecosystem having gone mobile first, frameworks like Ionic solve a lot of the current cross-platform compatibility issues, and can make a hybrid application perform with native app equivalency.

Overcoming the Key Challenges

How did we work with Sprout to overcome these challenges to create an excellent social mobile app? For all the technical insights fill out the form to receive the full case study by email!

  • Supporting Older Phones
  • Large Datasets in HTML5 Applications
  • Cross-Platform Challenges
  • Native-Like User Experience

Experiencing High-Value Business Benefits

With the right hybrid strategy for the right market, Sprout was able to write the code for their app once and deploy it on multiple platforms. The technology choices of Ionic framework, AngularJS, and HTML5 mobile were the right solution, and the market response and subsequent enhancement of the application have validated that. Remarkably, even the toughest challenge of getting adequate performance on older devices was successfully mitigated by the team’s work on building and later optimizing for key performance bottlenecks.

The work that Rangle.io and Sprout did together ensured the product’s success. Today, Sprout’s mobile app has garnered a growing user base and receives many positive reviews, and they’re continuing to enhance the product. Nine months after the mobile application release, TELUS Ventures announced its strategic investment in Sprout to promote their mobile solution for TELUS’ large enterprise customers to encourage a healthy lifestyle.

Learn More

Find out more about how we worked with Sprout to create their successful hybrid mobile app, fill out the form at the top of the page and receive the complete case study

To explore how we can work together on your current or upcoming project, contact us.