DHNN
Ruby on Rails & React MVP of an e-commerce for pet toys
1 — About DHNN
DHNN is a renowned design agency in Argentina. They worked with companies such as IBM, AVON, YPF, Telecom, and many more. We partnered up with them on this project for a client from Kuwait providing the development team, while DHNN provided their design team.
ChewChoo! is a subscription-based e-commerce for pet toys. People can subscribe to different plans to receive a box of treat bags and plush toys for their dogs every month.
2 — The challenge
There were 3 main challenges: themeing, integrating immature 3er party services, and time.
Chewchoo! would offer a different bundle of products to their subscribers based on a theme. In October, they'd offer a halloween themed bundle. In December, a Christmas themed bundle. And so on. Themeing means each bundle page to be fully customizable: images, backgrounds, texts, layouts, etc.
The third party services that needed to be integrated into the application were Telr (payments gateway) and Huboo (order fulfillment), available for the middle-east market. The challenge with integrating these services was mainly the lack of comprehensive documentation.
Time was a challenge because the client wanted the MVP to be finished in 3 months. This was a problem due to two things: the design and development processes should be started in parallel (normally the design process starts at least one sprint before the development process), and the number of features required in the MVP would make the schedule very tight.
"They offered valuable advice during the process and were always willing to collaborate with us."
Hernán Massau | COO
3 — The solution
DHNN is a design agency, so we needed to advise what was the best architecture and infrastructure for the project to be finished on time and make it scalable and reliable as it grows. Since the client wanted the design to be highly interactive, we decided to build a hybrid Ruby on Rails and React application. That means we'd build a full Ruby on Rails application but with React components for the pages that required interactivity.
Not to waste any time, we decided to start the development process in paralell to the design process. We had a very basic notion of what each feature would show in each page and implemented the feature in a minimalistic way. Once the client approved each page design, we'd go back and apply the designs.
A couple of sprints before the deadline, we added a QA analyst to the team in order to ensure the quality of the delivered solution. Our QA team designed the test cases and automated them with Cypress.
4 — The outcome
The application was completed in 3 months and a second phase with more features was started soon after the MVP was completed. Working with DHNN for the first time was a pleasant experience and we couldn't be happier with the results!
