Client Testimonials Everything Everywhere Your Orange for Nokia
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Project Type: Self Serve Application Customer: Orange Platform: Nokia Product Overview: Orange wanted Nokia customers to have access to the popular Your Orange (YO) Self Serve Application. The brief for a Nokia app was identical to that used earlier by Penrillian in developing a successful Blackberry app, but with three additional features. Ensuring good access for users with older handsets was a further priority. Versions of the app operating on other platforms have already reduced Orange call-centre traffic and costs significantly. “Every experience with Penrillian is fantastic. They are very up-front and honest about what they can do and make everything absolutely clear. Having that attitude at the start of any new project is great.” Hannah Beal, Device Self Serve Specialist, Your Orange. “They took up the project and ran with it as I now know they always will. I have come to rely on them. Whenever there is an issue, they respond quickly. Most people have a black or white answer of either 'we can or 'we can't' fix it. The Penrillian team always comes back with a range of solutions.” Hannah Beal, Device Self Serve Specialist, Your Orange. The Challenge:The project involved replicating the full functionality enjoyed by Blackberry device customers but using Qt, a relatively new programming language based on C++, which is a Penrillian speciality. Nokia handset characteristics meant that although the logic of the new app was similar, porting code from the Blackberry app was not an option. Considerable user-interface (UI) design input and back-end integration was also needed to create a Nokia experience matching that run by Everything Everywhere on other platforms, including Apple, Android and Windows Mobile. Orange also wanted to offer users data bundles with enhanced service options and special tariffs. “We needed a fully-finished app for Nokia devices but we were not in a position to create it ourselves. Penrillian developed one for us very swiftly. The project was always dynamic and forward-looking. As an engineer, my challenge was to get to grips with Qt and Penrillian made sure I had excellent information at a technical level. Communication between us was very good indeed.” Michael Lord, Software Engineer, Everything Everywhere Online Media Channels, Orange Objectives:
What we did: The app allows Nokia device users to manage mobile accounts via their handsets and change Orange's friends and family Magic Numbers. Pay-as-you-go customers can enter top-up voucher numbers directly. There is also a series of popular security preferences. Penrillian added three new features to the Nokia device version of the app. The first allows customers to view their roaming status when planning to use mobile devices outside the UK. The second means they can also review the Orange Safeguard status of other phones held within their account to limit juvenile access to internet chat rooms. Finally, pay-as-you-go users can now see their Phone Fund balance. The size of the application was initially an issue for lower end handsets, but Penrillian re-engineered the screen handling to cater for this. Achieving a high-quality user experience also involved extensive screen design work to integrate user-interface (UI) interactivity with the Nokia server. Regular software releases, as part of Penrillian's responsive Agile way of working, ensured that the Your Orange team was always closely involved in shaping successive iterations. “This was the third time we've worked with Penrillian and I've been involved from the beginning. Once again, they gave us weekly Agile releases to test and review before a regular discussion call every Friday afternoon. The ease with which we were able to feed back on any issues and the way that the Penrillian team picked them up straight-away was fantastic.” “I think the end benefits will be fantastic. They have produced some great apps for us. It was good fun too. Penrillian are a very down-to-earth bunch of people who know what they are doing and are very knowledgeable. They never fail to find answers and communicate them back to us in a way we can always understand clearly.” Daniel Box, Senior Tester, Everything Everywhere Results: Your Orange has continued to provide a consistent feel, look and experience to customers across different platforms that operate in different ways, while adding systematically to its full range of service features. This was achieved through a combination of technical expertise, design experience and working in close partnership with the entire Orange team. Click here to download this case study in pdf format
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