An app that allows beauty salon owners to lease out their beauty coworking office facilities. Through this app, beauty specialists can also rent these spaces.
Despite the fact that Russia's beauty industry is developing rapidly, there was no such app before. So, the customer approached us with a request to build one.
The first task for our team was to draft the requirements specification. In order to immerse ourselves in the project from the position of product development, we described all the processes, starting from the business model of the product and ending with a detailed elaboration of all the functionality and its dependencies. After that, our designers drew the UI/UX layouts considering the specifics of Google's Material Design for Android layouts and Apple's Human Interface Guidelines for Apple devices. The intention was to make the app interfaces look more native on both platforms.
Now we could get down to the main part of the development. We had to create the server and client sides of the app, as well as an admin panel for managers of the platform.
We implemented the server side on Node.js, because this framework is designed to handle a large flow of incoming client requests despite its light-weight nature, and therefore meets an important requirement of the app. MySQL was chosen as the database.
The client side consisted of two native mobile apps, for iOS and Android. The iOS app was written in Swift, while that of Android was in Kotlin.
The admin panel was written in React.js, the optimal framework for creating functional user interfaces.
The admin panel is used to manage content in the app. In the app, the admin can check for published beauty coworking spaces for rent, update information, ensure compliance with user rules, and provide technical support. All this is packaged in a single, concise and clear interface. That’s why moderators and admins are able to respond quickly to everything that is happening in the system.
The most interesting challenge we faced while developing the app was the reservation and payment system, which, according to the business model, involved split payments. The technical difficulty also lay in the fact that we had to protect transactions within the service and secure users' payment data. We were able to achieve maximum security and a payment processing and distribution solution. This was made possible thanks to the internal architecture that is based on integration of Yandex.Checkout, an online payment system, and the payment system of Tochka bank. The bank's specialists offered us a customized solution that fully satisfied our customer's business model.
So, together with our client, we were able to solve one of the main challenges faced by beauty salon owners. Today, our app is in demand among hundreds of thousands of beauty specialists and their customers.
