"Their team made it a point to understand the 'product' they were designing for, and ensured that it was consistent with the fundamental aspects of our system. They listened to our comments - and made sure that each design worked on and off line. It was a pleasure dealing with Dragonfly. "

Dr. Eric Glover,
NEC, Inc.

 

Sprint-Nextel - New product testing site - Project Purple

Overview

Sprint-Nextel was in a joint venture with Comcast, Time-Warner and Cox cable companies to bring a unified package featuring cable, digital voice, Internet and wireless to consumers. Considering the intense competition with the wireless market, the new product offering had to be developed, tested and rolled-out in a matter of months. Dragonfly was brought in to design and develop an online testing Web site to record and manage alpha/beta testers during the pre-launch phase.

Challenge

Working for four major telecom companies at once, all on equal footing, needed exceptional management abilities. The project needed to fit the individual needs of each company involved without becoming four separate Web sites. On top of these demands, the production time got smaller as the project scope increased in size. Staying on top of these parameters required constant updating of planning documents as well as the production schedule. There was no option to extend the final deadline.

Objectives

The site needed to have a way to register alpha/beta users and collect large amounts of data on each user. We also needed to develop a user approval system, a user rating system, user test scenario assignments with feedback ratings/comments, as well as various automated HTML e-mails. All of this info fed a large user database that needed restricted access between the companies involved. Overall, the site needed to share as much functionality as possible between all four companies, without sharing any of the collected data.

Along with the management and production needed for the project, we were also required to have server security set to the highest possible standards. Corporate security specifications required extensive re-development of the server.

The design objectives required the site to be easy to use with a consumer look and feel to the new temporary branding. This needed to be consistent across all e-mail communication, user test pages and support pages. The site also included a user support site full of documents and a custom built online user forum. All info was published via an extensive admin section with separate control for each of the joint-venture partners. Keeping data and functionality separate without building separate sites was one of our biggest challenges.

Solutions

Dragonfly worked with the joint venture partners to agree on a set of specs for data collected and functionality. Specifications were being updated till the moment of launch as well as negotiating the functionality across all parties involved. Careful planning and round-the-clock availability was critical to get the project done on a fixed deadline. All of the site's functionality was developed from scratch using open source PHP code, which gave us more flexibility than re-purposing an existing program.

The security requirements resulted in a locked down, dedicated server with limited access. Dragonfly also brought in a server security specialist to help meet the corporate requirements brought on by internal Web security within each partner.

Despite the ever-growing requirements, we were able to keep to the original proposed design concepts throughout the project. Dragonfly was able to pull together a consistent look that mimicked a true consumer experience while being flexible enough to implement across the site's technical parameters. The design was memorable while being adaptable to the e-mail, user pages, and even the administration screens.

Results

The Project Purple program was able to register hundreds of users across all of the companies involved with no technical issues. The users were able to take part in the testing experience and provide vital feedback for product development.

Dragonfly was also asked to add even more functions to the site post-launch. New testing parameters and extensive reporting functions were developed, tested, and added to the site, while it was still active with users.

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