Mobile app design breakthrough

The Telegraph has provided trusted commentary and news analysis for over 150 years. Every month, millions of readers engage with the publication’s content directly from a mobile device. With a previous app already available, The Telegraph is no stranger to mobile. 

However, an extensive redesign of the print version, the website and the iPad edition brought about increased awareness that it was also time to rethink the mobile experience. For The Telegraph, it was critical that any new mobile product meet rising reader expectations and help to engage a wider, younger audience.

With the UX and visual designs already well developed, The Telegraph approached us to collaborate on the development of the project. We were an ideal partner — able to hit the ground running with tried-and-tested software engineering skills to ensure the new mobile app design met delivery deadline without compromising quality.

The first priority, however, was to refine the new product’s vision and proposition. Reviewing the product through the lens of Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI), the joint team were able to create a stronger, clearer product vision. This enabled more effective prioritization of features for the product’s initial launch.

We led an initial series of workshops to get greater clarity around the reader's journey and proposition. Those workshops also proved instrumental in validating The Telegraph’s designs. This included a closer look at critical areas, such as navigation, which were subsequently revisited in line with feedback to allow the user to scroll through a personalized feed with a simple, single swipe.

Delivering The Telegraph’s extensive editorial content to readers on mobile required a highly configurable, modular architecture that could integrate a wide variety of data and rapidly deliver it to readers via mobile.

With that in mind, we developed two key microservices that integrated with existing, complex platforms. Drawing data directly from the content API that serves The Telegraph’s Google AMP platform integration, the services allow for lean, eager caching of data. 

This ensures information is delivered 12 times faster to mobile than would otherwise be possible through the existing content API. In addition, the services parse data of non-mobile elements so it can be quickly translated and optimized for delivery to a user’s mobile device.

It was also important that the final product could be easily managed by The Telegraph’s internal development team. This meant ensuring the new app was built using languages already familiar to internal developers — namely, Swift for iOS, Java with RXJava for Android, and Java with Spring Boot for the product’s backend infrastructure. 

Our engineers provided technical leadership throughout, and partnered with internal teams extensively to openly share knowledge and best practices. Working side by side, this transfer of knowledge has helped strengthen The Telegraph’s development capabilities and allowed for a smooth handover post-launch.

In a matter of weeks, The Telegraph was able to launch a fresh and compelling new product to market, for both iOS and Android.

Since its launch, the new app has had a further four updates. Early data indicates the mobile app design is performing well, and continues to be iterated in line with user feedback.

The overall success of the project is testament to the strong collaborative and co-sourced approach we fostered, and the technical leadership and best practice shared by our highly experienced mobile engineers.

Not only were challenging delivery deadlines met, but The Telegraph team has been set up for future success with a deeper, more applied understanding of Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI).