Project: Oxford Abstracts
Problem Overview
Oxford Abstracts is an academic conference abstract and paper management system.
They wanted to completely rewrite their existing application to deal with all the
issues they had identified.
The problem was that OA had been badly let down by another agency and they needed
something scalable, maintainable, and stable... and quickly.
Approach
Wrangling 200-odd feature requests into a coherent MVP was never going
to be easy, and it was only by working very closely with the client that
we were able to distil this extensive backlog into something manageable.
dwyl’s collaborative approach to all our projects really came to the fore here.
Bringing in our designers from the very first workshops, we worked through the
problems the existing application was facing and devised a plan to incrementally
nudge users to a new user experience.
Almost two years on, we are still working together to build more features based on
requests from Oxford Abstracts’ clients.
Solution
While the core of the app is closed, it was great to still have the opportunity to
work with entirely open source technology. We’re very used to working with Hapi.js,
PostgresQL, and Handlebars, but the real excitement comes from being able to use our
own open source modules for registration, login, auth, and sending emails.
The final product is jam-packed with features, including dynamic form-building,
completely customisable programme creation, an API for third party conference applications
and functionality for abstract review and decision-making all in one place, with personalised
dashboards and complex reporting to boot.
Key Functionality
- Dynamic form builder for abstract submission and review forms
- Abstract submission and review functionality
- Multi-stage conference software
- Event programme creation system
- Ability to invite individuals for abstract review and decision-making, each with personalised dashboards
- Enablement of complex reporting
- Progressive enhancement
- Continuous delivery
- Deployed to Heroku during development, with move to Amazon RDS
Technologies
Implementation Team
Technical Lead
Scrum Master
QA Code Reviewer
4 Developers
UX/UI Designer