Building the Duotone Academy APP - Philipp Rembold

Duotone Kiteboarding Academy S Bend Jeremie

If you haven’t already downloaded the Duotone Academy APP, then you’re missing out. A first-of-its-kind in kiteboarding, it has over 150 tutorials, interactivity with the worldwide community and pro riders, offline mode, virtual assistant and scoring system; Safe to say it delivers a premium progression package. Our vision and demands weren’t for the faint hearted. Philipp Rembold boldly took on the task of programming and delivering the APP, but have you ever wondered how it comes to life. Here’s how you got the ultimate ticket to ride.

Philipp, on behalf of the kiteboarding community, thank you! What’s your background in IOS development?

Before today's mobile phone was available, I studied Web Development whilst working as a Software Developer. When the iPhone come out in 2007 I immediately switched to Mobile Development as this kind of Software was very fascinating.

I was interested in Backend languages, the counterpart of Apps, and accomplishing an overall view of Software. I was almost always developing Enterprise Apps like ones that let retailers of Mercedes-Benz configure and inform about their cars. This was a big opportunity, to create an App that is more visible and more interactive with the consumer.

What did you think about the initial concept for the Academy APP?

When we started discussing the succeeder of the previous App, it was obvious early on that we had to focus on less features and have more involvement with the kite community in order to have an App that is used with pleasure and often. Picking out and concentrating on the Academy was a logical consequence, because we can feature something that can only be accomplished as a Mobile App for a perfect user experience.

As a kiter myself, I always lacked high quality tutorials, so I loved the concept from the beginning. With more features around the videos, like voting and asking the community for tips, this concept is unique.

Philipp, on behalf of the kiteboarding community, thank you! What’s your background in IOS development?

Before today's mobile phone was available, I studied Web Development whilst working as a Software Developer. When the iPhone come out in 2007 I immediately switched to Mobile Development as this kind of Software was very fascinating.

I was interested in Backend languages, the counterpart of Apps, and accomplishing an overall view of Software. I was almost always developing Enterprise Apps like ones that let retailers of Mercedes-Benz configure and inform about their cars. This was a big opportunity, to create an App that is more visible and more interactive with the consumer.

What did you think about the initial concept for the Academy APP?

When we started discussing the succeeder of the previous App, it was obvious early on that we had to focus on less features and have more involvement with the kite community in order to have an App that is used with pleasure and often. Picking out and concentrating on the Academy was a logical consequence, because we can feature something that can only be accomplished as a Mobile App for a perfect user experience.

As a kiter myself, I always lacked high quality tutorials, so I loved the concept from the beginning. With more features around the videos, like voting and asking the community for tips, this concept is unique.

Duotone Kiteboarding Academy App Philipp

What challenges did you overcome?

Having most of the tutorial and community content available, along with offline sync mode, is something that must be well synchronised with changes that are made by other users when they are online. This is something that needs to be well designed and implemented with care.

What makes this APP special?

For me this App is special within sports due to the offline availability of all lessons and the actively selected videos, accompanied by the community features for that lessons.

The library of videos is huge and in top 4k quality. Does this affect the design process?

The App can scale with a growing amount of clips by handling a lot in the background because we wanted offline availability and cannot process only when a user selected to view content.

Also, we have a twofold hosting of videos. The download gets the full quality while a non-downloaded lesson is streamed when viewing online. The stream adjusts it's quality by the bandwidth that is available at the current internet connection. On the one hand this is state-of-the-art but you have to put in some effort to provide that user experience.

How do you test an APP like the Academy?

For smaller distinct units there is automated testing that is programmed. But the main testing is done hands-on by the Team Riders and the people in Marketing, Design and Software Development. We all used it at its destination, outside when mobile.

When did you know the APP was ready to go?

When all possible situations in all the App's processes are implemented and tested well. It's clear that there is no software without failures, called bugs. You can go live only with software that has rare but obvious bugs, which can be worked around whilst the user is accomplishing a task. The software has to be functional and the design must be nice and accurate. But in the end, it's a feeling you get over time that the App is ready to go.

Interaction and community is a huge part of the APP, how did you make this happen?

Actually the most work here is implemented in backend systems and that’s kind of a black box for an App developer. So the main efforts here are to have a well designed interaction between our backend and the App, accompanied by failure tolerant software on both sides.

What we don't feature yet is live chat to have message delivery immediately or to see when a user is writing, but we will definitely bring that in.