From Couch to Fit: App motivating to get moving

Online Events App platform for physical activities

Alvarum was founded in 2008 to revolutionise the process of raising financial support known as fundraising for charities and non-profit organisations. Today they are the leader in online fundraising in France and Germany. 

The company offers scalable solutions for every type of charity. From simple, easy-to-use software to business process outsourcing. It builds its activities on the social character of projects based on the values of innovation, credibility and transparency.

Alvarum's business partners are well-known charity organisations such as the German WWF or the French Red Cross, as well as prestigious events such as the Berlin Marathon. The mission is to provide institutions, associations and individuals with funds to finance charitable projects in Europe.

The next project after Alvarum Payment, was Online Events - a platform for online events. What kind of challenges did we encounter?

Online Events Platform - challenges

The main challenge in the project was to deliver software in a very short time with high quality, where a lot of emphases was put on preparing an effective and clear application in terms of UI and UX. The application was to be used on mobile devices.

The online events project was carried out from the very beginning by our team. The challenges that we encountered were mainly related to the very short implementation time. We started the project in April and the first online event was to take place in June. The whole situation was related to Covid19, as the organization of mass events was stopped, the client decided to build an application for online events.

An interesting and productive challenge was the fast implementation in new technologies (nodejs, vue). We had a very short time to implement the application, which made the team learn new technologies during the project implementation.

Another challenge was to design a high-quality UI and UX. The application was to be used mainly on small displays, so the interface had to look very good and the presentation of information should be in such a form that it is clear and fully understandable for the recipient.

Due to the lack of time resources for testing the application, our attention was largely focused on the quality of the code and the refinement of the UI and UX.

Online Events Application - solutions

We delivered an interface that was clear, easy to understand and, above all, effective. The proof of this is that later on, when we introduced new versions of the application, the user interface remained practically unchanged.

We created a very good tool that covered a lot of needs of the non-profit organisations which used the application. 

The application enabled conversations via chat which had an impact on the integration of users. Another important element of the system was the video rooms module. This was due to the need for interaction between organisers / team leaders and event users.

Online Events Application - result‍

Before the Covid19 pandemic, mass runs were as the main activity. With the implementation of the app, events could take place online. 

Moving events online meant that people who could not or did not want to attend mass events were now free to participate directly from their own homes. The instructional video that was part of the online activity motivated people who had not previously participated in such events to exercise. This solution greatly expanded the mass running convention.

The second need was to organise a large community that could also compete with each other thanks to the application. Using the application we could track the distances run by the participants and these results were presented to all participants. 

All activities, i.e. the instructional video, the online session in the video rooms and the final run, made up the event. Events always had their time. Up to several thousand participants took part in such events. During the project, we decided to change the current video streaming provider and implemented a solution provided by Zoom. The change of streaming provider was a suggestion of the client, thanks to this change we significantly reduced the costs of event management.