Mobile App That Gamifies Relationships of Couples

Customer

An Australian startup in the industry of Media & Entertainment.

Challenges

The customer turned to HQSoftware as they set out to create a mobile app that would add a spark to relationships by gamifying couples’ household routines. HQSoftware’s team was to translate the customer’s elaborate concept into an engaging, intuitive and secure OS application worth earning an estimated base of 100,000 users.

Solution

Functionality

This app enables two partners living together to play a ‘do or dare’ game with a range of domestic tasks like cooking, dishwashing, shopping, cleaning and more in exchange for bonus points that can be then spent on asking a ‘favor’ from the partner.

Registration starts with one of the partners sending a personal invitation code generated by the app to their significant other so that they can join in as associated players. The user can login with their Facebook, TouchID or custom username and password. With personal data and access to the app strictly protected, all users can enjoy a secure gaming environment.

The app supports two game modes – for tasks and favors, respectively – and three levels of complexity. Tasks and favors can be chosen from the predefined lists and easily tracked by both players via the activity feed, game statistics and push notifications.

As the game requires providing the proof upon completing a task, the app allows to take a photo or a short video and attach it to the completed task for the partner to approve or disapprove of the result.

Architecture

At the technical level, all media files are cached in the app so that users can access content while being offline. At the same time, content is also stored on an Amazon S3 server and, upon request, is delivered to users through generated links, thus also unloading the app’s backend.

On the server side, HQSoftware built the system logic using php/MySQL to store semi-static data such as lists of task names, favors, points, etc. The team used RESTful services to ensure reliable and fast interaction between the backend and the frontend. The latter was implemented with the help of Apache Cordova and AngularJS.

Within two months, HQSoftware’s mobile developers came up with a finished product that incorporated the customer’s original design.

Outcome

The app is about to be released internationally for iOS with further plans to bring it to the Android platform. As the customer and the project team are currently going through the testing phase, they plan to keep increasing the server capacity and scaling it to sustain 100,000 estimated users.

Once released, the app will bring gamification to domestic chores, perhaps, the most boring part of couples’ relationships. Motivating to complete tasks in return for rewarding favors from the partner, the app is easy to set up and use while also complying with high data privacy standards.

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