Visidot – Contact tracing and visitors management system.
Visitor management system
The Project
Visidot is the digital alternative to the physical visitor log, offering business campuses, as well as organizations the opportunity to track, measure and improve their visitors’ experience, all in a 100% GDPR compliant environment.
Initially designed as an internal product, part of our strategy to digitalize as many internal processes as possible, Visidot has quickly evolved as a digital product requested by both private & public companies, an innovative solution for complying with the GDPR regulations and diminishing the levels of bureaucracy in Romania.
Visitor Management
Contact tracing
UX/UI Design
Mobile App Development
The Challenge
Although most of the companies have been using a physical visitor log for a while now, the standard pen & paper method did not ensure the confidentiality of the visitors’ personal information. Thus, beyond smoothening an internal process, this digital product is aimed at solving a series of problems imposed by the GDPR restrictions.
The main challenge unfolded once we had an epiphany to pivot this product from internal use to a set of industries that had numerous visitors on a daily basis. As soon as we realized that not just business offices, but entire tech campuses needed a tool to keep track of their visitors, we started to ponder upon a strategy to scale up this idea.
Our Approach
We know that this is not the typical way to start a project, but to us it was clear that the problem was already defined. Having transitioned from working on Visidot as an internal solution to making it our first own startup, we allocated an entire cross-functional team to bring this product to market within a limited timeframe.
In order to first validate the direction to where this product was going, we conducted user interviews and iterated on user personas to understand the users’ needs and behavior better. The rapid scale of this digital product was done by pursuing an Agile methodology and a Lean Approach.
That implied working with small iterations to validate our hypotheses about the product, prioritizing a set of essential features and ultimately releasing an easily customizable MVP that would yield enough value to the clients and consistent feedback to us, as developers.
“Constantly working with startups has shaped our mindset towards lean development. Our mantra became iterate, iterate, iterate until you find the best product for the problems that your customers have. This also happened with Visidot. We built it in a way that is super easy to iterate and adapt to other markets’ needs.”
Tudor Ciuleanu, CEO, RebelDot & Founder of Visidot.
Analysis and discovery
Having realised that our internal solution had to be widely scaled, we started to brainstorm the needs that this digital log could support other businesses in solving. Although the problem was obvious to us, in order to make sure that Visidot is fit for external use too, we carried on with conducting further research to validate our initial hypotheses.
We kicked off the process by diving into an initial phase of research, clarifying the user personas, as well as the problem that the product had to solve.
Resulting from a series of user interviews, four types of users took shape: the receptionist, responsible for welcoming visitors and smoothing the registration process, the delivery guy that is recurrently coming to the company, the admin supervising everything that is happening and the visitor.
UX/UI Design
Once a basic version of our internal product was developed, we focused on making it functional as well as visually appealing and customizable to the external clients. Having mapped out the needs, motivations, frustrations and goals of the users, we proceeded on sketching the user flows, covering a series of scenarios such as: check-in, check-out, recurrent visitors, group check-in and check-out.
The next logical step was to translate the sketches into black and white wireframes, so our team could judge purely the functionality of the prototype and then match it with a visually appealing interface. With the user flows and wireframes agreed, we then selected the colors, iconography and typography.
Following this crucial step, we went ahead with designing the UI, based on our simplistic and minimalist vision: light shades of colours on the corners of the screens; clear icons for the admin interface; intuitive input fields
Prototype Building
With the design being in place, we developed a prototype to be showcased to business centers, aiming to validate the idea once again and make sure it was fit for their needs as well.
This stage of the process was invaluable as we also got to gather consistent feedback from our target segments so we can adjust the product in order to be even more appealing.
Development
Visidot was developed following a Lean Approach and in an Agile Manner.
We engineered a cross-functional team to cover the development of the visitors management solution, starting from the initial design phase all the way through development, launch and maintenance, conforming to an end-to-end process that we usually pursue for each of our clients.
Visidot was built in React and React Native.
Launch and maintenance
Immediately after launching the mobile application, COVID-19 kicked in.
However, having the app built as an easy to pivot solution, the lockdowns represented an opportunity for the development team to continually work on making it better, gathering valuable feedback from the early adopters to implement other functionalities that would help companies adjust to the new normality.
With countries around the world gradually finding their way back in business, Visidot had to adapt to the current environment. As part of this process, it has pivoted towards an industry that was not initially thought of but became one that could benefit greatly from this digital platform after the pandemic outbreak.
Pivoting to the HoReCa industry
Pivoting the app to the HoReCa industry was an intuitive move. It happened as we recognized the market need for such software and decided to support the local community, helping organizations survive the tough conditions. In just a few weeks, the product lured over 100 leads, offering restaurants and pub owners a much more efficient and health-compliant method of registering their clients to prevent another virus spree.
Eventually, the additional benefits of using this platform started to emerge one by one. It became clear to every pub and restaurant owner that Visidot represents an impulse to their businesses’ digitalization, a small step towards a large and much-needed process. Besides that, they started to see in Visidot an efficient means of managing their clients, one that they can use it in far more instances than just preventing the virus.
