Nöffe (Digipig)
IoT Mobile App
About the client
Nöffe is a Norwegian startup on a mission to educate children about personal finance and promote money-saving habits. They created an IoT-powered piggy bank to give kids a tangible interface to interact with virtual money. The piggy bank comes with a mobile app allowing parents to oversee and manage their kid’s savings.
The challenge
Nöffe approached us with the challenge of designing and building a mobile application integrated with an IoT device and a bank API to manage financial transactions. The application had to provide security and display information clearly. At the same time, it had to present a fresh, modern design and appeal to children’s tastes.
The solution
Before we dove into design and UX brainstorms, we needed to learn all about the limitations and challenges that came with the hardware and bank API. We then figured out the most frictionless user flow to make the initial setup as smooth as possible. From this, we created the visual language and started development. The IoT integration part posed challenges we had to handle by closely collaborating with the client’s hardware team.
The interface had to be playful yet trustworthy - finding compromise and balance came in handy.
Results
The resulting MVP application was launched in app stores and users were introduced to it right away. Having implemented analytics from the very start, we immediately started diagnosing UX problems with the onboarding process that were causing users to quit the app at first use. Launching the app and inviting users so early helped us fix critical issues earlier and shorten the onboarding time by almost 75% in the first post-launch update.
When working on the project we focused on using the most recent technology pieces.
We had to meet various demands while integrating with hardware and the bank’s API. Quick response time and secure, stable connections were in focus. The Nöffe technology stack is:
- Node.js / Express
- React Native
- PostgreSQL
- AWS Elastic Beanstalk
- Firebase Cloud Messaging (notifications)
- AWS CloudWatch (error tracking software)
- Github (code review)
- Cloudflare (protection)
- CircleCI (integration)
Conversation is one of our most important values and a habit we support at every stage of our development process. Conversation is executed through digital tooling so the context is never lost. We use Slack for chat, Jira for planning, and Github for code reviews and discussion.
