CASE STUDY: ORANGEPANEL
OrangePanel:
The OrangePanel iPhone application lets users create their own polls and surveys, and see how other users respond. OrangePanel also offers users paid surveys, giving them points which can be redeemed for cash.
OrangePanel is an excellent example of a hybrid application, and using HTML5 to enable faster iteration. The first version was a fully native application, using an API to communicate with the server and native iPhone controls to display the surveys. After several updates, we decided that this approach is too cumbersome, since all changes are delayed by the Apple App Store approval process.
Version 2.0 of the application added a "social surveys" feature which allows anyone to create quick polls. We decided to make the new features entirely web-based, and have the application handle only basic tasks like authentication. This involves a small tradeoff in performance, but provides a considerable benefit in development speed.
Features:
- Create, vote, and comment on free polls and surveys
- Take paid surveys and redeem points for cash
- Push Notification can notify users when a new paid survey is available, without the app being active
- User-created polls to increase participation
- Ability to upload pictures as part of polls
- Facebook integration
Technology:
- Hybrid application. First two tabs are HTML5 web views loaded entirely from the server, so that changes and new features can be added without going through the submission process. The other tabs are native tabs and use a JSON API to communicate with the server.
- Backend uses Ruby on Rails
- Push Notification
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