HeyMama
CHALLENGE
HeyMama came to us in search of focus: to define their “North Star”, bring its disparate functions from a long list of third parties into one custom platform, and rework the app’s core technical infrastructure. Our challenge lied in shaping the technical details into a better big picture.
SOLUTION
Under the hood, we improved the infrastructure to ensure data integrity and built custom logic for managing subscriptions and applications. On the outside, we put ourselves in the user’s shoes to create a beautiful and on-brand community experience.
RESULTS
HeyMama reached a launchable — and loveable — version complete with a community forum and a custom admin system. The HeyMama app has plenty of room and potential to keep evolving, and we’re excited to be along for the ride.
Heymama is the community for working moms, connecting mothers who are growing careers and families. “the juggle is real, and we’re here to provide you with the community and experiences to propel you forward.”
As a member of HeyMama, it was exciting to get the opportunity to work with their team to help elevate their member experience, and business operations, with creative technical solutions.
In our first few weeks of working together, we focused on defining our North Star: what we wanted to achieve, and how we would know when we’d achieved it. Our visioning focused on the big picture, painted from the point of view of a single member’s experience from her first point of contact with the brand.
ENTERPRISEIOSANDROIDWEB APPLICATIONDIRECT-TO-CONSUMERFAMILIESLIFESTYLE
We were clear that we wanted to bring all of the disparate aspects of HeyMama’s offering into one platform - a member-centered hub where everything could be accessed easily. Beyond that, we defined the product’s value in terms of the member’s emotional response to it, as well as how it would fit into their daily routines. HeyMama members are busy, so we wanted to deliver high-value content and experiences efficiently, and we envisioned a layer of AI that would create a highly customized and continually renewed experience for each member.
Before we could build a new platform, however, we needed to address core technical infrastructure. We started by cleaning up existing data and migrating it to a new, more secure database and server. At the same time, to ensure ongoing data integrity, we needed to change how it was collected. We worked with the HeyMama team to define what data points were most meaningful and then re-wrote, re-designed and re-built the member application form in alignment with these decisions. We A/B tested this form and collected member feedback, ultimately building multiple iterations until we felt that we had the right balance between optimizing conversion and ensuring the quality of those conversions.
In the background, we built custom billing logic for subscription management, including free trial and discount code capabilities; as well as a bespoke admin system for managing incoming applications and member data.
To test our assumptions at each stage, we collected strategic analytics data and worked with HeyMama to create a representative cohort of users to form a “Product Council” for ongoing feedback.
Also behind the scenes, we brought on security partners to help ensure that we were building the most data-secure platform we could; and through real-time security monitoring, we are ongoing patching and addressing any vulnerabilities that arise. This will help enable HeyMama to pursue SOC2 and ISO 27001 compliance at any point in the future, and in the meantime gives HeyMama and its members peace of mind around data security.
With clean and secure data inputs, we built the first few pieces of the platform: the ability for members to see and update their profile and billing data, and the ability to search and view the profiles of other members. We then built our MLP (minimum lovable product) version of the HeyMama community forum with communities and a custom admin system. As with the application form, these features went through multiple rounds of design and iteration before launch.
All features were built for compatibility with all major browsers, both web and mobile.
We have exciting things up our sleeves for HeyMama, so watch this space! And check out their important work on behalf of working parents at HeyMama.co.
Enterprise Web App Development; Social Media Web App Development | Platforms: Web and Mobile Browser Optimization
What we delivered
DESIGN
Designed easy-to-use and on-brand user experience for application process
UX/UI design for application form on web and mobile, including iOS and Android
Initial UX/UI design for member profile editing, viewing and searching
Initial UX/UI design for forum posting and browsing
DEVELOPMENT
Iterative, agile development process
Creation of information systems to collect analytics and member feedback
Team of two developers focusing on frontend and backend systems
Dedicated project manager and quality assurance (QA) specialists
Structured, easy to read, well commented and consistent code style
FRONTEND TECH STACK
Angular 9 // framework
NgRx. // store
Auth0/Angular-jwt // lib // auth protocol
Fingerprintjs2 // lib identify
Hammerjs // lib touch events
Moment // date
Quill // WYSIWYG editor
Stripe // payments
Google places
BACKEND TECH STACK
NestJS // framework
MongoDB (+ Mongoose) // mongoose - ODM
Passport + BCrypt // auth
Handlebars // html compiler + fns
Nodemailer + Multer // mailing
AWS SDK (s3 bucket, smtp)
Hubspot API
Jest // testing
OTHER
Wordpress // updates to HeyMama.co
CORE FEATURES
Application form: Data verification and safe storage, custom billing system, discount code and free trial capabilities, mobile and web optimization
Admin tool: Review and respond to applications, data and activity access and search features, real time content management
Member-Facing platform: View and search member profiles; edit and preview own member profile and set items to public or private; easily contact or refer other members; view forum, organized by communities, feed of own posts and posts followed; post to forum, set community and location; reply and edit posts; @mention; search and filter posts; mobile and web optimization
Data security: Utilization of security best practices for server and database; implemented and respond to real-time security monitoring; passed black- and gray-box penetration tests
