CURV
Creating a powerful wellness platform that helps users progress themselves day by day
CURV is an app that makes self-improvement an easy part of your everyday. How? By converting the best science, studies and ideas on human behaviour into simple, powerful actions. The client, Working Voices, is a team of coaches and experts who provide online and classroom training in communication, behaviour change and soft skills to individuals and teams in various companies. We worked with them to create the brand new B2C CURV platform aimed at Generation Z: the most ambitious, and yet most anxious generation on record.
The Challenge
With such creative clients, we needed to lead the Discovery and harness their natural out-of-the-box thinking to plan and execute an exciting product in the self improvement field. The CURV app would need to encapsulate the rich media experiences in an immersive and intuitive structure, backed up by a speedy and secure architecture and commitment to managing users’ attention responsibly.
What We Did
Our job was to provide Discovery and UX, design, frontend and backend development for CURV, and deliver the app within 6 months. This also encompassed strategic advice on which features to include, how to shape the proposition and how to increase engagement.
Insights
To provide maximum value we needed to:
- Keep to the 2-month windows mapped out for each stage of the 6 month project
- Capture and translate the client’s vision and goals accurately during Discovery
- Work flexibly to accommodate how best to deliver wireframes
- Explore the competitive landscape thoroughly
- Prioritise the crucial elements the first version of CURV would launch with
- Provide a secure and robust architecture which was able to scale
The Approach
We assembled our in-house team of 8 including project manager, producer, designer, front- and backend developers and QA, and quickly got underway with the Discovery stage, which lasted two months. Something unusual about this stage was that the artistic CURV team filmed parts of the Discovery process, sharing a ‘behind the scenes’ account via Instagram, and helping to build anticipation and a following for the launch.
We had several conversations with the client in order to fully understand their vision and goals. Our first deliverable was a high-level user flow with priority guides of how the information should be placed on the various screens hierarchically. During Discovery, we also researched and trialled other self-development and wellness apps, as well as indirect competitors like cognitive and fitness training products, whose audience for self improvement ’exercise’ is similar.
The next step was creating initial wireframe screens. Given the dynamic nature of the communication with the client and their preference for visuals, as well as the fact that the brand colours and guidelines were provided by them before the start of the project, we quickly switched to creating and demoing designed screens directly.
The whole design process was quite agile, with a couple of pivots of the user flow once we had designed its first version. The client even ran a few improvised user validation sessions with the designed prototype in order to gather some additional insights regarding how their target audience might perceive the product.
The final stage was the development, QA and launch of the iOS product on the App Store.
The tech
- GraphQL
- React Native
- PHP + Symfony
- PostgreSQL
- Backend running on AWS
Challenges
- Balancing the need for a ‘sticky’ and engaging app with ensuring time online is time well spent, and users’ attention is managed carefully
- Providing flexible and cost-effective architecture which meets current project requirements and future developments at the same time
- Identifying the crucial components of the system which need to be delivered within the first version of the product
- Accommodating small changes in the copy and logic once implementation was underway
- Delivering a robust solution within sensible time- and budget frame
Results
- Reached 1k downloads within 2 weeks
- Achieved a 35% tap-to-install conversion rate (the avg. is 5.9%)
- Had paying subscribers literally from day one
Their side of the story
Want to hear the story of the build from the horse's mouth? Check out our Client Confidential with Karl Brown, CEO and Co-Founder of CURV.
One of the reasons that I wanted to work with Despark in the first place was that I got the sense that if we were to have a conversation, we'll have a proper conversation, you're not going to be a nodding dog to this situation, you're going to ask the right questions, and have a clear view and thought process on this yourself.
