10 years of digital product development

This year has already been filled with new starters and exciting new projects from some forward thinking new clients as well as many from our long standing client base. And that’s not to mention our very own super secret internal ones….that’s enough said about that for now 😉

We’re so proud of how far we’ve come in the last 10 years so we wanted to look back at some of the projects we’ve worked on that have shaped and moulded us, and some that were just really fun to work on!

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2022: Exciting new product development

A couple of years ago I had the idea of turning the I-Spy books into a mobile app. Busy with client work has meant this never progressed any further than just an idea. With the pandemic hitting the tourism industry hard we saw an opportunity to to use the concept of gamified discovery as a way for visitors to unlock discounts. Creating a better experience for visitors whilst also boosting second spends.  We are currently building an initial concept to trial at the National Marine Aquarium and are hoping after a successful trial period we will be able to roll out the platform to attractions across the country.

2021: Turning delivery pain to driver gain

When Pallex got in touch they were struggling with a delivery management platform that was unadaptable and didn't meet their needs. Throughout discovery we spent time with core team members including joining a driver on one of his routes to understand the challenges and frustrations they are facing. We went on to create a mobile application that not only allowed the drivers to manage their own consignments and routes, but also understand where in the lorry the consignments where placed, speeding up each delivery in the process.

2020: Redesigning client management

The Western Province Association (WPA), is one of the top 10 health insurance companies in the UK. WPA wanted to improve the customer on-boarding and application experience to increase revenue and bring on new customers. We started by hosting a user testing workshop focused on the public facing website and application flow. During the workshop we uncovered customer pain points and identified areas that could be optimised for improvement. From the output, we learned that potential customers weren’t confident in the insurance product they had chosen and didn’t understand what they were buying, which created a barrier to signing up. To counteract this, we designed a product selector flow, which recommends the product that will meet their need, without overloading them with information. This method was backed up through our competitor research, which showed that 50% of the top competitors use a product selector to help customers choose the right product. The end result of the design and development update, showed a 37% increase of customers applying for insurance over the period of 2019 to 2020.

2019: Using Augmented reality to bring history to life

Getting to work on a project close to home is always a win for us so when Devon and Cornwall Rail Partnership approached us with an app concept we were keen to see how we could make it a success. After making some changes to their initial concepts to increase usability we went on to build and launch a cross platform app for Android and iOS. The app overlaid video onto posters at the station using Augmented reality giving the feeling of the poster coming to life as it speaks to you about the history of the line. Whilst traveller's journeyed on the train the app highlighted key points of information, sharing location specific content such as video, historic photos and a guide on what to look out for. The app helped DCRP to win a national communication award.

2018: Richard, Sooty, Sweep and Soo

There are times in business when you get enquiries in, that you have to have a double take. When Richard approached us to help him to re-envisage the Sooty website this was one of those moments. Having grown up with a Sooty puppet on my hand I was excited for us to get started. We wanted to bring the vibrancy of Sooty into the website while also being a useful tool for Richard and the team. Building in analytics so he could see how many people who were being driven to book his shows and also giving him the ability to see how popular certain regions are so he could make informed decisions on where to launch future shows.

2017: Revolutionising the office tea round

When we started Elixel in 2012 we always had a dream of creating our own products. In 2017 this dream came to fruition with the launch of Tea Minus. The app was created to solve one of the biggest issues in office culture. The Drink round. The app allowed users to create a drink round, add their preferences and alerted the team that a round had started. Each team member could add a drink choice on their own device. When the round timer was up, the app would choose someone to make the drinks and give them a list of drinks to make. We launched the app on Product hunt and it reached the top 3 spot for products launched on that day beating products by Shopify, Asana and Hubspot. Beaten to the top spots by Trello for desktop and Facebooks Bonfire.

2016: Prototyping a future market leader

Crowdcube approached us to to act as an independent advisor for the mobile app they were looking to launch. The app was aimed at individuals who want to invest in start-up's, early stage and growth businesses. We performed a user experience audit of their designs and highlighted areas of concern before building a prototype and running full user tests with investors at their London HQ. After presenting our findings the team went on to make further improvements to the designs and initially launched on the iOS store. Within 12 months of launching the app over £5m worth of investment was processed through the app. All before launching on Android devices.

2015: Supporting internal innovation

We were introduced to Arvato by a mutual friend who had been supporting their innovation team with some video content.  They didn't have the design or development capacity in-house to deliver the whole project. We worked in partnership to design a dashboard for their new payment platform and created a marketing site to onboard new customers.

2014: Digitalising wedding stationary

We love getting approached by businesses that are looking at ways they can use digital to revolutionise their business. Hip Hip Hooray is a south west based wedding and event stationary company. We developed an online platform that allowed their customers to choose a design, fill out all their details and either print the design themselves or get Hip Hip Hooray to print it for them.

2013: Enabling sellout events

When Plymouth Students Union were advised to speak to us about their mobile app development project they were relying on emails and SMS to reach out to their students with minimal success.  Working with them we developed an application that allowed them to survey their student base, push offers and market events. The app enabled them to sell out events within 24 hours of sending a push notification to the app .

2012: Raising awareness of the illegal primate trade

Our first project as Elixel was for Wild Futures, a primate welfare charity based in Cornwall. We had created a game for them a few years previous while we were still students. On hearing we set up shop they got in touch about creating a new mobile game with them to support a campaign they were working on with Stephen Fry. It challenged gamers to see if they could complete the enrichment activities faster than Wild Futures resident monkeys.

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It was so difficult to decide which 10 projects to write about in this blog as we've enjoyed working on all of them! We feel honoured and privileged to have worked with every single one of our amazing clients - that includes past, present and all of the future clients to come. 

If you have a project you want to get off the ground then why not get in touch. Maybe your project can be included in our next 10 year roundup…..due 2032!