K9, K9, K9, K9, K9, K9, K9, K9, K9
K9, K9, K9, K9, K9, K9, K9, K9, K9, K9, K9, K9
Introduction
K9 Nation’s aim is to build a community of like minded dog walkers designed to share their own dog related content including advice, tips and recommendations. The K9 Nation app brings dog owners together and provides them with the tools to enjoy their lives with their dogs. The app helps dog owners confidently discover new walks with useful dog related amenities and other helpful tips pinned on the K9 map.
K9 was at a crucial stage in its start-up journey and appointed Studio Graphene as its digital product partner to build a new MVP to demonstrate market demand and traction to secure further investment.
The most important element of the MVP was Google Map integration to allow users to track and record their walks utilising a live user tracking system. Our team focused on making sure users could add custom markers via an intuitive interface enabling them to pin useful and dog related venues or amenities whilst out on their walk.
Studio Graphene kicked off the project by understanding the requirements, goals and vision of the client and focusing specifically on MVP features and functionality.
Solution
We used Algolia, the AI powered search and discovery platform to display pins dropped onto the K9 map by users, adapting the predefined codes and creating an API to allow the Agolia datasets i.e. pins to be layered on top of the map.
From an onboarding and community perspective we developed a registration, login and feed section similar to other social media platforms. Additionally we integrated Twitter and Instagram APIs so that the K9 application could fetch any posts with pet related hashtags from these platforms whilst displaying them in the users K9 application feed.
We built the application using the low code development tool FlutterFlow, which allowed us to use one codebase to run the application on both iOS and Android, as well as saving us significant time with development and testing. It also meant we could integrate the basic code structure more straightforwardly alongside designing the database, plus implement functionality tasks and integrate them with Firestore for a scalable, fast and cost effective backend.
Our development team produced bespoke code using FlutterFlow’s customisation features overcoming challenges including screen responsiveness - so the app screens could adjust automatically for different screen sizes, and navigation bar persistence - allowing users to smoothly navigate through different screens without having to click on any particular navigation menu.
Results
K9 Nation successfully launched its MVP applications on Apple’s App Store and Google’s Playstore built using FlutterFlow. Core functionality included Google Map integration for dog walk tracking and recording, and a robust social media feed using Twitter and Instagram APIs.
