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Dave Churchman
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23rd November 2010
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 Client Name : GTNews
Client Profile : gtnews is the leading global knowledge resource for over 60,000 treasury, finance, payments and cash management professionals. Online, gtnews is updated weekly and provides subscribers access to an archive of almost 3,000 global treasury articles in addition to special reports, commentaries, surveys, polls, news, ratings updates and whitepapers.
Project Title : GTNews App
Target Platforms : iPhone, iPad iOS 3.2+
Project Lifecycle : 6 weeks
Services - App development
- Content management automation.
- App testing
- Project Management
- Customised image management.
Architecture
GTNews have an in-house content management system which would require customisation to fully integrate into the requirements of the app. In order to simplify the integration process Eigo worked with gtnews developers to extract the news information into a flat data feed. This is managed by a pull process each hour to import and update the news feed hosted on Eigo app hosting servers.
The app is integrated into the news feed using XML and our custom image management and caching system. Content is stored as htm cache files on the iPhone along with images for the articles suitable for display on the iPhone.
Project Objectives - Provide subscribers access to GTNews information while away from their desk.
- Ensure articles were available offline, viewed once available anytime.
- Provide an app design and structure to support potential sponsorship.
Solution Approach
The key element of this project is the management of client development team working alongside the Eigo team throughout the project. GTNews's team were developing the interfaces to suit our requirements, and the technology needs of both the iPhone environment and the effects on GTNews's internal content management system meant many revisions of the documentation before a line of code was written.
We were keen to ensure GTNews stakeholders could approve a model of the application design and functionality before we started to build the app itself. During project specification we worked with the flat news feed to establish the key information to put in the app. From this we built a clickable user interface mock up. Based in a web browser this approach allows you to explore your application and get a feel for it’s use before the final layout is approved.
The app was intended to be simple to use and intuitive, common app functionality such as re-ordering of news channels, changing font size on the articles and pull down to update were implemented to make the client experience that much more user friendly.
The app was regularly released during the build process to get feedback from GTNews, and to ensure perceived functionality from the click through still behaved as expected once the app was constructed.
The app was Launched in November 2010 sponsored by Citi Group.
Conclusion
GTNews have pushed the app to their entire user base yielding a good foundation of users who are giving positive feedback and ideas for future versions, initial investigations into bringing the app to new platforms and increasing functionality are under way and we will continue to help GTNews affect their mobile digital strategy.
App Feedback
CFO 5 stars
Amazing handy app. Excellent content well delivered.
It's Good 5 stars
Good to read on tube on the way to work.
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