Project Type: Educational Game

Customer: O2

Platform: iPhone

iPlay&Sing App Development Project Overview:

iPlay&Sing became the exciting extension of iPlay&Learn a bright, colourful free application for pre-school children. It was designed in just weeks through a close partnership between O2 and Penrillian. iPlay&Learn had already become extremely popular, with 90000 users and 3¼ million games played. But the O2 team's first experience of working with Penrillian triggered many extra exciting ideas not included in the original version. Once again, they turned to Penrillian to deliver the new iPhone / iPod Touch application – iPlay&Sing.

“Throughout the whole project, from initial discussions, through fun developments and tense problems to a successful, on-time delivery and beyond, it has been a pleasure to work with Penrillian. They’re a good bunch, with innovative attitudes to problems, flexible spirit and a helpful nature.”

 Stuart Proctor, O2.

The iPhone App Development Project Challenge:

When O2, keen to 'give back' more to its mobile community, approved another version, Penrillian was part of the subsequent brainstorm. As with version 1, only three weeks of development time was available – interspersed with three weeks for O2 trial and feedback – to convert fresh ideas into a marketable product. In this short period, responsive Agile development meant that daily changes were plotted accurately, winning ideas expanded, weekly priorities updated and frequent new iterations tested by O2.

Development Project Objectives:

• To further increase functionality, fun and visual appeal.
• To develop a sing and play element, keyboard and voice-recording function.
• To significantly enhance an existing drawing game.
• To develop a hand-eye co-ordination maze game.
• To launch iPlay&Sing as an upgrade rather than a new application.

Penrillian applied Agile best-practice to manage changing development work priorities whilst providing regular weekly progress reports to satisfy our more traditional needs for progress tracking. Controlled, managed, flexible – perfect!”

Stuart Proctor, O2.

App Development Methodology

Because the scope of extra features was ambitious within a tight timetable and defined budget, the need to work in a well-managed partnership became particularly important. Fortunately, O2 / Penrillian team co-operation achieved in iPlay&Learn increased during iPlay&Sing. Whenever new iterations were passed over for review – seen by O2 as constructive opportunities to 'go and play' – sharply-focused feedback sessions were held within 2-3 days. Discussions concentrated on recent developments, amendments, and the logical question of 'what do we do next?' Penrillian’s iterative approach allowed O2 to decide 'we really like this and would like to do more', and frequently 'this was not our original aim but seeing the results, it is certainly where we want to go now.'

“At the tail-end of the iPlay&Learn development Penrillian suggested that we could include analytics tags which would allow us to see how the application was being used. I’m glad we did – it’s amazing how successful the app has been, and how world-wide the user base is.”

Stuart Proctor, O2

Development Project Outcomes

As intended, iPlay&Sing added considerably to O2's commitment to childhood personal development and pre-school preparation in line with Early Years national curriculum standards. The application was given a new introduction screen, musical games and five sophisticated interactive 'maze' games designed to encourage hand-eye coordination.

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